COLLEGE 
SONS  and 

COLLECJE 
f^ATHER:S 


HENRY  SEIDEL  CANBY 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CAUFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


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COLLEGE    SONS 
AND    COLLEGE    FATHERS 


COLLEGE 
SONS  and 
COLLEGE 
FATHERS 

Henry  Seidel  Canby 

ASSISTANT  PROFESSOR  OP  ENGLISH 
YALE  UNIVERSITY 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS 
NEW  YORK   AND    LONDON 


College  Sons  and  College  Fathers 


Copyright,  191 5>  by  Harper  &  Brothrn 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 

Published  September,  191 S 

I-P 


■i 


Libras-y 

-~  4S.^        ^^',        I 


TO 
M.   G.    C. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Preface vii 

The  Undergraduate 1 

The  Undergraduate  Background 26 

The  Professor 48 

The  Luxury  of  being  Educated 71 

College  Life  and  College  Education 97 

Culture  and  Prejudice 118 

The  Colleges  and  Mediocrity 138 

Current  Literature  and  the  Colleges 159 

Writing  English 184 

Teaching  Engush 210 


PREFACE 

For  this  book  I  have  chosen  the  essay  rather 
than  the  chapter  as  a  unit  of  division,  so  that  I 
might  be  able  to  discuss  each  of  my  topics  as  a 
subject  important  in  itself.  The  ten  essays  here 
included  proceed,  I  am  emboldened  to  think, 
according  to  a  development  of  experience  and 
of  thought  that  is  coherent  even  if  not  severely 
logical.  The  first  five  treat  of  profit  and  loss 
in  college  life  and  college  teaching;  the  last 
five  of  the  broader  problems  that  the  American 
college  must  meet.  But  I  have  had  no  desire 
to  mark  out  my  field  into  sections,  and  cover 
them  all.  It  is  too  extensive,  too  full  of  life 
and  perplexity  and  happiness,  to  dogmatize 
and  classify  and  divide  and  define  within  it. 
If  I  had  been  possessed  of  an  elaborate  ped- 
agogical doctrine,  I  should  have  spent  more 
time  upon  mapping  the  corners,  and  less  upon 
trying  to  say  truly  what  I  have  seen  and  what 
I   think.     Indeed,  I   am   more   interested   in 


PREFACE 


college  life,  college  students,  and  conditions 
as  they  are  to-day  in  our  colleges,  than  in  any 
program  or  theory  whatsoever. 

As  it  happened,  it  was  not  the  rage  of  the 
propagandist,  but  rather  the  creative  working 
of  happy  memory,  and  sobering  experience 
reacting  upon  thought,  that  led  to  the  writing 
of  this  book.  Hence  he  who  so  desires  may 
read  these  essays  as  a  literary,  and  I  trust  not 
unpleasant,  transcript  of  experience,  selecting 
his  topic  as  he  chooses  his  cigar,  for  the  promise 
of  its  label.  Or  if  his  interest  is  more  profes- 
sional, he  will  find  the  principles  that  I  have 
endeavored  to  draw  from  observation  applied 
and  reapplied  to  the  problems  of  the  American 
college. 

I  have  written  for  undergraduates,  present, 
past,  and  prospective,  and  for  the  parents  of 
undergraduates.  It  is  true  that  I  have  ad- 
dressed these  essays  to  college  soiis  and  college 
fathers.  But  they  may  be  applied,  I  believe, 
doubtless  with  important  modifications  of  de- 
tail, to  college  daughters  and  the  mothers  of 
college  daughters  as  well.  It  is  a  sufficiently 
difficult  task  to  describe  even  the  sex  one  knows 
best,  when  it  is  involved  in  the  obscure  proc- 


PREFACE 


esses  of  getting  educated.  And  so  I  have  ven- 
tured to  write  for,  but  not  of,  the  woman  in 
our  colleges. 

I  wish  to  acknowledge  the  courtesy  of 
Harper^s  Magazine  and  The  Yale  Review  in 
permitting  the  reprint  in  revised  form  of  these 
essays;  and  to  thank  a  hundred  unnamed  un- 
dergraduates for  a  personal  relationship  with- 
out which  I  would  not  have  had  the  courage  to 
pretend  to  whatever  insight  they  may  possess. 
Henry  Seidel  Canby. 

New  Haven,  Connecticut, 
June  17,  1915. 


COLLEGE    SONS 
AND    COLLEGE    FATHERS 


COLLEGE  SONS 
AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

THE  UNDERGRADUATE 

IT  was  a  somnolent  afternoon  in  May.  There 
was  a  grass-cutter  on  the  college  lawn  out- 
side, and  a  persistent  oriole  in  the  elms.  We 
were  on  Browning;  "Childe  Roland  to  the 
Dark  Tower  Came"  was  the  lesson.  As  the 
application  to  life  and  idealism  became  clear, 
the  mystery  of  the  poem  began  to  stir  the  men 
before  me.  In  spite  of  the  drowsy  noises  and 
the  warm  sleepiness  of  the  air,  I  could  see 
interest  awaken  in  their  faces,  and  feel  their 
minds  stretch  to  take  in  the  thought  of  the 
poet.  When  I  reached  "Dauntless  the  slug- 
horn  to  my  lips  I  set,  and  blew.  Childe  Roland 
to  the  Dark  Tower  came,"  I  could  pause  in  a 

tense  silence,  and  say,  "That's  all  for  to-day," 

1 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

with  quite  a  pleasant  glow  of  successful  achieve- 
ment. 

They  picked  up  their  hats  and  most  of  them 
scurried  for  the  ball-game.  But  a  row  gathered 
in  front  of  my  desk.  "What  is  my  mark, 
please?"  one  asked,  and  jarred  unpleasantly  on 
my  optimistic  mood.  "Am  I  going  to  be 
warned  this  month?"  said  another.  "Are  we 
going  to  have  this  in  the  examination?"  a  third 
pleaded.  Then  up  stood,  then  out  stepped, 
then  in  struck,  amid  all  these,  a  fourth  with  a 
cold,  hard-souled  look  to  him.  "What  is  there 
practical  in  all  this  literature.  Professor?"  he 
queried,  obstinately;  and  might  have  added,, 
"Your  answer  won't  interest  me.** 

I  went  into  my  oflSce,  and  sat  down  to  think  it 
out.  I  remembered  a  phrase  of  my  old  teacher: 
**The  astonishing  power  of  the  undergraduate 
mind  to  resist  the  intrusion  of  knowledge."  I 
remembered  the  multitudinous  articles,  essays, 
letters,  reports  I  had  been  reading  on  the  failure 
of  the  colleges;  the  hail  which  (from  papers 
they  never  read,  and  speeches  they  never  hear) 
had  been  pouring  on  these  boys;  and,  thinking 
not  so  much  of  the  disappointment  of  this  last 
attempt  of  mine  as  of  other  more  serious  dis- 


THE   UNDERGRADUATE 


comfitures,  I  wondered  if  it  were  not  all  true. 
Then  I  began  to  take  stock.  And  as  I  thought 
over  my  years  in  college  and  my  years  of  teach- 
ing, and  the  misunderstandings  and  the  blind- 
nesses of  them,  and  the  charming  boys  I  had 
known,  and  the  wasted  energies,  and  all  the 
mistakes  to  be  made  in  dealing  with  plastic  but 
incalculable  life,  I  found  myself  coming  out  at 
a  door  quite  different  from  the  one  by  which  I 
had  entered.  I  felt  as  great  an  impatience 
with  the  howl  and  outcry  against  the  colleges 
and  the  undergraduate  as  with  the  story- 
tellers who  have  been  romanticizing  college 
life  until  they  have  distorted  it.  The  saying 
of  gentle  Traherne  came  into  my  mind,  "Prize 
what  you  have,"  and  I  began  to  wonder  if 
before  we  accept  the  growing  condemnation 
of  college  life,  and  the  failure  of  the  college  to 
educate,  it  would  not  be  well  to  understand 
and  to  appreciate  the  undergraduate. 

It  is  not  an  easy  thing  to  do.  On  the  one 
hand,  there  is  sentimental  fiction,  which  has 
cast  a  delusive  glamour  upon  him.  On  the 
other,  there  is  the  business  man  who  says  he 
is  untrained,  the  literary  man  who  calls  him 

illiterate,  and  the  educator  who  asserts  that  he 

s 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

is  unwilling.  There  is  his  own  p>ersonality, 
which  is  in  a  transition  stage,  and  so  doubly 
hard  to  comprehend.  And  there  are  his  pjoses, 
many  and  various,  which  must  be  discounted 
before  we  can  begin.  Nevertheless,  it  is  a  dull 
observer  who  cannot  be  certain  that  three 
estimable  virtues — courtesy,  energy,  and  loyalty 
— flourish  in  the  colleges. 

The  word  "undergraduate** — in  certain  peri- 
odicals— has  always  an  adjective  linked  to  it, 
such  as  "uncouth,'*  "boisterous,'*  "noisy,** 
"ill-mannered.**  We  who  live  with  him  won- 
der why.  Noisy  and  boisterous  he  is,  but 
usually  on  highly  proper  occasions.  He  cheers 
at  the  theater  instead  of  clapping;  personally 
I  like  it;  and  the  actors  seem  to  like  it,  too. 
He  improvises  scratch  quartets  between  lec- 
tures, and  chants  in  the  corridors.  Why  not! 
Uncouth  he  may  be  occasionally  when,  in  the 
presence  of  his  elders,  especially  the  women,  he 
remembers  th.at,  after  all,  he  is  little  more  than 
a  boy,  and  stumbles  over  a  chair  or  pronounces 
with  difficulty.  Ill-mannered  he  certainly  is 
not.  The  old  days,  when  tutors  were  stoned 
in  their  rooms  and  bulldogs  set  on  the  lecturers, 
have  gone,  at  least  in  the  colleges  with  which 

4 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE 


I  am  familiar.  Courtesy  is  as  much  a  part  of 
college  custom  as  cleanliness;  the  politeness  of 
one's  class  is  a  wall  through  which  it  is  difficult 
to  break.  An  insulting  answer  in  a  recitation- 
room  is  nearly  as  rare  as  a  burst  of  tears.  If 
a  piece  of  chalk  should  hit  me  when  my  back 
was  turned — and  in  the  old  days  they  did  not 
stop  with  chalk — I  should  believe  that  it  was 
an  accident,  and  probably  be  right.  It  is  true 
that  courtesy  is  only  a  by-product  of  educa- 
tion, to  use  President  Wilson's  happy  phrase. 
But  there  is  more  of  it  in  the  colleges  than  in 
the  world  outside. 

Again,  it  is  an  old  reproach  against  the 
college  student  that  he  is  idle  and  lazy.  Our 
present  race  of  undergraduates  are  energetic 
beyond  belief.  Besides  study — and,  in  spite 
of  the  current  opinion,  all  of  them  do  study — 
they  are  busy  in  a  hundred  directions.  It  was 
only  recently  that  the  faculty  extorted  an  un- 
willing promise  from  the  workers  of  the  Yale 
News  not  to  carry  on  their  competition  after 
midnight!  Football,  baseball,  the  crew,  mean 
hours  every  day  of  hard  labor  (not  fun,  mind 
you)  for  half  the  year  at  least.  Fraternity  cam- 
paigning leaves  the  men  exhausted  in  mind  and 

6 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

body  at  the  end  of  the  "rushing  season."  The 
Y.M.C.  A., business  managerships  for  the  many 
organizations,  to  say  nothing  of  the  hundred 
activities  by  means  of  which  the  needy  support 
themselves,  make  college  life  a  whirl  of  action, 
in  which  only  the  negligible  and  the  despised 
hang  back.  You  must  make  an  appointment, 
as  with  a  corporation  president,  if  you  wish 
to  see  a  college  leader  out  of  recitation  hours! 
That  these  eflForts  are  well  directed,  that  this 
is  the  ideal  of  academic  leisure,  I  do  not  con- 
tend. But  energy  is  certainly  not  a  vice. 
No  one — except  the  fat  monks  of  the  English 
monasteries — criticized  the  Northmen  for  their 
energy.  And  there  is  even  more  energy  in  our 
colleges  than  in  American  life. 

But  the  great  and  shining  virtue  of  the  under- 
graduate is  loyalty.  At  least  one  eminent 
philosopher  thinks  that  in  this  word  the  greater 
virtues  are  summed.  However  that  may  be, 
wherever  college  life  is  sounded,  in  athletics, 
in  friendship,  in  devotion  to  the  college,  in 
many  regions  less  obvious,  it  seems  to  be  com- 
pacted of  loyalties.  This  it  is,  I  believe,  that 
makes  our  boys  seem  more  earnest,  while  less 

serious,  than  the  English  student;   that  makes 

e 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE 


them  seem  naive  in  contrast  with  older  men 
who  have  Hved  in  a  world  where  ends  are  fol- 
lowed less  blindly.  The  difiFerence  is  not  to 
their  discredit.  Once  there  came  into  my  class 
of  good-natured,  immature  sophomores,  a  Rus- 
sian who  had  taken  part  in  the  revolution,  and 
escaped  with  just  his  life  and  his  revolutionary 
ardor.  At  first  the  contrast  between  this 
desperate  idealist,  who  knew  how  to  use  wea- 
pons, manage  men,  risk  lives  for  a  cause,  and 
these  well-fed  youngsters  who  had  never  con- 
ceived of  any  social  order  but  their  own,  was 
almost  ludicrous.  When  he  spoke  in  his  quick, 
sharp  voice,  they  squirmed  uneasily  in  their 
seats.  It  seemed  unfair  that  ideas  (for  he  had 
them)  should  assail  them  on  their  unprotected 
rear!  But  as  I  thought  the  contrast  over,  the 
difference  lessened.  Their  blind  loyalty  to  one 
another,  to  their  captains,  to  their  college  and 
its  spirit,  differed,  after  all,  only  in  object  and 
in  maturity  from  his;  in  its  way  was  just  as 
fine. 

I  do  not  mean  that  the  loyalty  of  the  under- 
graduate appears  in  the  form  of  emotion  or 
sentimentality.     Talk    about    "the    dear    old 

college"  and  "my  old  chum"  has  been  given 

7 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE   FATHERS 

the  expressive  epithet  "rah  rah,"  and  laughed 
out  of  the  vocabulary — at  least  in  the  more 
sophisticated  institutions.  The  undergraduate, 
indeed,  has  become  a  man  of  the  world.  He 
hides  his  feelings  except  at  the  football-games; 
his  talk  is,  half  of  it,  badinage;  and  he  is  won- 
derfully successful  at  seeming  to  take  life  with 
no  seriousness  whatsoever.  Furthermore,  there 
are  the  cynics,  and  the  prematurely  mature, 
who  wonder  very  rightly,  like  a  character  in  a 
recent  college  novel,  whether  the  college  isn't 
there  to  serve  them,  and  not  they  the  college. 
Nevertheless,  this  subterranean  loyalty  flows 
under  the  whole  college  structure,  and  wells  up 
in  the  most  surprising  persons  and  places.  To 
act  against  the  "spirit"  of  the  place  is  the  un- 
pardonable sin.  "He  has  a  pretty  poor  spirit" 
is  the  current  anathema.  Not  to  come  out 
for  a  team,  or  an  editorial  board,  or  a  musical 
club,  if  one  has  the  ability,  is  damning — and 
almost  incomprehensible.  To  be  snobbish  is 
to  be  unpopular — not  on  moral  grounds,  but 
because  it  hurts  the  tradition  of  democracy 
(democracy  means  "being  civil  to  one's  class- 
mates ")  which  everj'  American  college  believes 

that  it  alone  conserves.     To  be  lazy,  to  be  over- 

8 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE 


studious,  to  be  dissolute,  to  be  spendthrift,  all 
offend  in  some  subtle  or  obvious  fashion  the 
spirit  of  loyalty.  Loyalty  unites  itself  in  the 
subconsciousness  with  the  desire  for  social 
honors — the  Mammon  of  our  colleges — and  is 
an  inextricable  part  of  the  motives  of  those 
whose  chief  ambition  is  to  make  this  society 
or  that.  It  accounts  for  much  of  the  strength 
of  college  friendships.  It  is  a  powerful  lever  to 
pry  a  man  up  in  the  world  after  graduation,  and 
many  among  us  have  been  kept  moving  ahead 
by  the  old  college  feeling  that  one  must  be  loyal 
to  the  expectations  of  one's  friends.  In  stories 
of  broken  -  ribbed  quarter  -  backs  and  water- 
logged crews  the  thing  has  been  sentimentalized 
until  it  is  hard  to  make  it  appear  the  simple 
fact  of  college  life  and  the  all-pervading  force 
that  it  is.  But  however  we  may  dislike  some 
of  the  results,  or  deplore  some  of  the  ends  and 
ideals  of  college  loyalty,  it  is  folly  and  destruc- 
tion to  attack  it,  or  depreciate  in  the  least 
degree  its  remarkable  value  for  American  life. 
The  energy  and  the  loyalty  of  the  undergraduate 
are  like  the  waters  of  a  mountain  stream.  Run- 
ning wild,  they  are  wasteful  and  dangerous, 
though,   to   complete    the    figure,   highly    pic- 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

turesque.  Dry  them  up,  or  fight  them  back, 
and  you  do  no  good  to  any  one;  harness  or 
direct  them,  and  you  will  have  a  tremendous 
power  at  your  command. 

But  how?  I  am  not  so  rash  as  to  attempt  a 
final  answer  to  that  question.  I  am  content 
at  this  point  to  maintain  that  until  we  prize 
what  we  have  it  is  useless  to  criticize  the  under- 
graduate. And  I  hope  to  make  clear  that  even 
then  we  must  carry  our  criticism  beyond  an 
analysis  of  faults. 

These  are  said  to  be  many  and  black.  To 
begin  with,  it  must  be  admitted,  even  by  those 
who  are  most  in  sympathy  with  him,  that  much 
of  the  undergraduate's  energy  is  undeniably 
wasted.  I  say  "much"  advisedly,  for  it  is 
mere  pedagogery  to  suppose  that  all  effort  not 
directed  toward  intellectual  development  is 
wasted.  Nevertheless,  far  too  much  of  this  col- 
lege energy  is  burned  as  incense  for  the  lesser 
gods.  Interpret  education  as  broadly  as  jou 
will,  even  then  it  is  diflBcult  to  reconcile  a  mad 
endeavor  to  do  something  and  be  something  in 
the  estimation  of  the  little  college  conmiunity 
with  any  true  function  of  the  college.  \  It  is  the 
approval  of  their  classmates  that  our  under^ 

10 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE 


graduates  seek,  the  approval  and  the  material 
reward  of  approval:  an  election  to  a  society, 
which  means  in  this  college  world  comfortable 
self-respect  and  an  assured  position,  and  in  the 
next,  the  outer  world,  valuable  friendships, 
useful  connections  that  one  does  not  have  to 
wait  for  graduation  to  appreciate.  Not  that 
this  approval  is  undesirable.  You  wish  it  for 
your  son — and  no  one  can  blame  you.  But 
a  student  body  that  seeks  social  recognition 
as  an  end  is  likely  to  be  somewhat  uncritical 
of  the  activities  that  public  opinion  approves. 
It  is  hard  enough  to  fulfil  the  requirements  for 
success,  without  the  added  labor  of  estimating 
their  value.  It  is  much  easier  to  plunge  along 
blindly,  do  what  is  expected  of  you,  and  drown 
your  critical  faculties  in  busyness,  than  to 
reason  out  the  true  serviceableness  of  your 
efiforts  to  the  college  or  yourself. 

They  waste  much  of  their  energy,  these 
undergraduates,  because  their  range  of  sym- 
pathies, of  interests,  of  ambitions,  is  too  narrow. 
No  one  expects  a  boy  of  seventeen,  just  enter- 
ing college,  to  be  especially  broad-minded;  but 
though  the  vision  of  the   Freshman    and   the 

Sophomore  and  the  Junior  grows  clearer  and 

11 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

truer,  it  broadens  very  slowly,  and  sometimes 
not  at  aU.  This  last  statement  would  be 
ludicrously  untrue  of  individuals.  Of  the  ma- 
jority of  college  students  it  is  true.  They  are 
narrow  in  their  sympathies;  and  under  exist- 
ing conditions  this  is  also  not  unnatural.  Who 
expects  the  average  youth  of,  say,  twenty  to 
be  thoroughly  sympathetic  with  art,  literature, 
music,  research;  or  with  economics,  politics, 
and  the  principles  of  finance;  more  especially 
when  all  these  activities  have  scarcely  touched 
him  at  home?  As  a  thoughtful  senior  once 
said:  "In  summer,  when  I  go  home,  it  seems  as 
if  no  one  outside  cared  about  the  things  you 
try  to  interest  us  in  here."  Fortunately  we  are 
on  the  eve  of  a  "gro wing-up"  of  our  student 
body.  A  great  and  important  change  has 
begun  in  our  universities  in  the  past  ten  years. 
One's  classes  "feel"  differently.  They  re- 
spond, however  irregularly,  to  the  intellectual, 
the  scientific,  the  esthetic  appeal.  The  sym- 
phony concerts,  the  good  plays,  the  "outside 
lectures"  have  a  larger  and  larger  following. 
In  the  Elizabethan  Club  recently  founded  at 
Yale,  where  for  the  first  time  (there  at  least) 
graduates  and  undergraduates  meet  upon  an 

18 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE 


equal  basis  of  club  membership,  the  talk  is 
various  and  good;  and  the  best  talk,  I  think, 
comes  from  the  boys.  The  undergraduate's 
vision  is  narrow,  but  it  is  narrow  because  his 
sympathies  are  too  often  dormant — and  the 
fault  is  not  his. 

It  is  their  ideals  of  which,  with  more  justice, 
one  complains  —  their  ideals  which  the  very 
blindness  of  their  loyalty  prevents  them  from 
estimating  truly.  I  was  present  not  long  ago 
at  a  class  meeting  where  certain  leaders  were 
urging  the  men  to  get  out  and  do  something 
worthy  of  their  class.  An  eager  youth  jumped 
to  his  feet,  ran  his  hands  through  his  hair,  and 
burst  forth:  "Look  here,  you  fellows,  there's 
the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  That's  a  college  activity. 
You  ought  to  go  to  the  meetings.  You  fellows 
that  aren't  out  for  the  teams  or  the  musical 
clubs  ought  to  see  whether  you  can't  do  some- 
thing there.  It's  a  good  thing,  anyhow,  and 
religious  and  all  that;  but  what  I'm  saying  is 
that  it's  a  college  activity  and  ought  to  be  sup- 
ported. Where's  your  spirit,  anyhow!"  As 
I  listened,  I  saw  in  imagination  the  spirit  of 
the  elder  D  wight  recoiling  in  horror  from  this 
profanity;    of    the    reverend    president    Ezra 

13 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

Stiles,  calling  for  a  sign  from  Heaven  to  pro- 
claim the  blasphemer  preordained  to  damnation. 
But  it  was  not  blasphemy.  My  youth  was 
speaking  according  to  his  lights.  Supporting 
the  college,  as  he  understood  it,  was  a  duty 
beyond  which  he  could  not  see. 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  point  out  the 
effect  of  this  uncritical  loyalty  upon  the  under- 
graduate's attitude  toward  the  curriculum. 
The  results  have  often  been  described  —  al- 
though often  with  more  vehemence  than  truth. 
Let  me  say,  however,  as  emphatically  as  I  can 
say  it,  that  the  current  idea  of  the  student  who 
never  studies,  never  is  interested  in  his  work, 
is  nonsense.  A  very  respectable  quantity 
of  honest  studying  is  accomplished  in  our 
American  colleges.  The  observers  who  think 
differently  are  often  deceived  by  the  fashionable 
pose  which  dictates  that  a  man  shall  say  to  his 
fellow,  "Don't  know  a  thing  about  the  lesson," 
no  matter  how  hard  he  may  have  worked  the 
night  before.  Neither  in  England  nor  in 
Germany  (at  least  in  the  universities)  are 
there  so  few  men  who  get  through  with  little 
or  ho  study  at  all.     As  for  quahty,  that  is  a 

different   question.       Intellectual    broadening, 

u 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE 


mental  training,  culture,  and  all  that  a  college 
in  its  strict  sense  is  designed  to  achieve,  get 
just  the  loyalty  and  enthusiasm  to  which  their 
places  among  the  various  "college  activities" 
entitle  them.  They  have  a  place.  Only  the 
men  who  do  not  count  neglect  them.  But 
they  stand  below  the  extra-curriculum  activ- 
ities. They  are  overshadowed  by  the  lesser 
gods. 

Again  this  applies  to  the  mass  only.  Individ- 
uals, hundreds  of  them,  do  not  come  into  the 
scope  of  this  criticism.  I  could  pick  at  a 
moment's  notice  groups  of  men  from  our  best 
colleges  to  meet  any  objection — whether  of 
educator,  esthete,  man  of  the  world,  scholar, 
or  business  man — which  might  be  brought 
against  college  life  and  college  education. 
Individuals,  the  student  Dogberrys,  whose 
ridiculous  themes  get  into  print,  whose  spellings 
are  hawked  about  for  the  amusement  of  their 
elders,  who  write  letters  to  the  papers  and  sign 
themselves,  "Yours  respectively,"  do  not  enter 
into  it.  They  are  exceptions.  They  are  the 
product  not  of  the  college,  but  of  defective 
schools,  or,  more  frequently,  defective  homes. 
Nevertheless,  the  immature,  the  dangerously 

2  15 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

narrow  ideals  are  there,  and  they  strongly 
affect,  if  they  do  not  make,  the  public  opinion 
of  the  undergraduate  world.  You  cannot 
blink  them  away,  and  they  control  and  direct 
too  much  of  the  energy  and  too  much  of  the 
loyalty  in  itself  above  praise. 

Who  is  to  blame?  First  and  foremost,  only 
in  small  part,  the  undergraduate.  He  is  a 
creature  of  his  environment,  past  and  present. 
The  faculty,  then?  In  some  measure,  of  course. 
Given  a  faculty  of  mighty  teachers,  men  of 
intense  personality, of  real  intellectual  eminence, 
and  we  would  send  our  false  gods  scurrying. 
They  do  retreat  in  every  college  before  the 
attacks  of  this  man  or  that  who  succeeds  in 
making  literature  or  economics  as  vital  (and  this 
is  diflBcult)  as  baseball  or  a  Senior  society.  But 
a  faculty  made  up  of  such  individuals  would 
be  like  Cromwell's  army — every  man  a  potential 
general.  It  can't  be  done — especially  at  the 
price  we  are  willing  to  pay  for  them.  Fur- 
thermore, many  a  professor  enlisted  for  peace, 
not  for  war;  and  when  one  considers  what  is 
expected  from  modem  scholarship,  who  can 
blame  him  for  disliking  to  spend  all  his  energies 
in  battle  with  those  who  do  not  care  to  learn? 

16 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE 


Let  us  not  excuse  the  faculty,  however,  but 
rather  hold  them  in  reserve  for  another  dis- 
cussion. 

Who  else  is  to  blame?  The  schools?  Their 
problem  is  quite  certainly  the  same  as  that  of 
the  colleges.  We  change  the  venue  without 
settling  the  case,  by  calling  them  into  question. 
The  parents  and  the  home?  Here  we  seem  to 
reach  one  terminal,  at  least.  For  what  did  you 
send  your  son  to  college?  To  be  educated, 
of  course.  But,  in  all  honesty,  what  is  the 
meaning  of  college  education  for  you?  Were 
you  not  content  to  have  him  take  a  degree, 
without  too  close  questioning  as  to  how  he 
took  it?  Were  you  not,  on  the  other  hand, 
eager  that  he  should  live  to  the  full  the  much- 
vaunted  "college  life,"  achieving  his  part  of 
popularity  and  social  success?  Be  sure  that 
your  half-expressed  desires  will  become  guid- 
ing principles  for  him.  He  knows  and  fears 
two  public  opinions,  his  school's  and  yours. 
If,  in  your  guidance,  a  little  conventional  talk 
about  doing  well  in  his  studies  (easily  said  and 
easily  seen  through)  fails  to  hide  a  far  greater 
desire  that  he  shall  "make  a  society"  and  be 
popular  in  his  class,  how  in  any  justice  can  you 

17 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

complain  if  the  intellectual  influences  of  the 
college  pass  over  him  and  do  no  more  than  wet 
his  plumage?  In  your  capacity  of  bank  pres- 
ident or  superintendent  or  lawyer,  you  ask  for 
men  who  have  been  trained  to  think,  who  are 
mentally  better  and  broader  for  their  educa- 
tion. In  your  capacity  of  father,  do  you  not 
send  your  boys  to  college  with  the  well-under- 
stood agreement  that  they  shall  be  straight, 
energetic,  and  socially  successful  (admirable 
aims  in  themselves),  and  the  further  under- 
standing that  they  shall  do  nothing  to  prevent 
the  faculty  from  educating  them?  But  no 
one  was  ever  educated  by  merely  consenting 
to  the  operation!  The  will  to  believe  may  be 
an  end  in  itself;  the  will  to  be  educated  is  only 
the  first  step  in  the  process. 

I  do  not  wish  to  seem  sourly  pedagogical, 
or  opposed  to  the  joy  of  living  which  should 
be  in  the  blood  of  every  man  in  college.  Nor 
would  I  minimize  the  enduring  pleasure  of 
college  life,  which,  though  a  sentimental  glam- 
our may  have  been  thrown  upon  it  by  the  lime- 
light of  romantic  fiction,  is  certainly  one  of  the 
most  picturesque  and  most  likable  features  of 

America   to-day.    If   it  came   to   a   question 

18 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE 


between  efficiency  and  happiness  in  college,  I 
for  one  should  hesitate.  It  is  not  a  little  thing 
to  have  felt  the  Falstaffian  joy:  "Gallants, 
lads,  boys,  hearts  of  gold,  all  the  titles  of  good 
fellowship  come  to  you!  What,  shall  we  be 
merry!"  And  it  is  not  necessary  to  be  Falstaff 
in  order  to  possess  it  in  college.  But  it  does 
not  come  to  such  a  question.  There  is  no  fear 
that  intellectual  interests  will  make  joyless, 
sallow  bookworms  of  our  undergraduates.  As 
a  figure  in  argument,  the  "grind"  has  been 
overworked.  He  exists,  of  course,  but  his  real 
activity  is  in  the  mind  of  the  bluffer,  the  shirker 
of  intellectual  labor,  who,  imagining  a  soulless 
engine  quite  different  from  the  mild  and  plod- 
ding original,  shudders  at  what  he  has  escaped. 
The  fun  in  college  life  is  in  no  danger  of  sup- 
pression. It  is  unsuppressible.  One  wonders 
if  there  might  not  be  even  a  little  more  if  the 
competition  for  teams  and  crews  were  less 
killing;  if  there  were  more  time  for  the  imagina- 
tion to  play.  The  successful  men  in  college 
do  not  seem  to  be  very  happy.  Most  of  them 
— especially  the  athletes — are  overworked! 

It  is  a  concerted  attempt  by  faculty  and 
parents  that   we  need.     A   model  curriculum 

19 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE   FATHERS 

will  not  do  it.  We  have  altered  and  system- 
atized our  curriculums,  since  the  break-up  of 
the  old  classical  courses  left  chaos  behind, 
until  the  eflSciency  should  have  increased  fifty 
per  cent.  Teaching  in  nearly  all  subjects  has 
had  energy  poured  into  it,  until  one  expects 
every  year  to  see  some  result  commensurate 
with  the  expenditure  of  devotion,  and  in  no 
satisfying  way  discovers  one.  In  truth,  we 
have  to  work  harder  at  our  teaching  than  in 
the  days  when  students  were  eager  to  be  taught 
— and  that  we  have  kept  the  colleges  from 
going  backward  is  at  least  not  discreditable. 
But  in  so  far  as  all  this  regards  methods  and 
systematization,  it  is  just  machinery,  effective 
and  laudable,  but  machinery.  We  have  splen- 
did devices  for  leading  the  horse  to  water — but 
he  must  wish  to  taste  of  the  Pierian  spring 
before  we  can  make  him  drink. 

It  is  upon  the  aims  and  the  ideals  of  the  boy 
that  we  must  work.  Send  him  to  college 
believing  that  you  believe  in  broadening  the 
intellect,  in  training  the  mind,  in  deepening  the 
appreciation  of  life,  and  it  will  be  relatively 
easy  (for  no  healthy  animal  likes  the  preliminary 
stages)  to  educate  him.     If  you  want  educa- 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE 


tion  from  the  colleges,  see  to  it  that  your  boys 
respect  the  fruits  of  education  when  they  arrive. 
And  yet  it  is  unjust  to  fall  into  the  scolding 
vein  and  charge  fathers  and  mothers  with  con- 
ditions for  which  they  are  only  partly  re- 
sponsible. The  final  explanation  of  our  dif- 
ficulty is  to  be  found  in  the  peculiar  social  and 
intellectual  circumstances  of  American  life  in 
this  generation;  and  this  is  at  the  same  time 
the  most  encouraging  and  the  most  discourag- 
ing feature  of  the  situation.  No  need  to  re- 
peat at  length  what  has  often  been  said.  Bred 
of  democracy,  fostered  by  the  best  in  our  na- 
tional ambitions,  a  passionate  desire  to  educate 
every  one,  first  built  up  our  school  system  and 
then  burst  upon  the  colleges.  This  was  good; 
but  it  has  been  followed  and  accompanied  by 
an  equally  passionate  desire  on  the  part  of  a  ^/ 
prosperous  generation  to  set  the  mark  of 
gentility  upon  its  sons.  And  the  easiest,  be- 
cause the  best  recognized  way,  has  been  to 
send  them  to  college.  To  criticize  the  desire 
is  to  criticize  the  American  plan.  But  when — 
as  so  often — it  has  been  blind;  when  the  col- 
lege has  been  regarded  as  a  finishing-school, 
and  the  nature  of  the  desired  finish  determined 

21 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

upon  grounds  in  which  real  intellectual  training 
and  true  culture  have  had  small  part,  then  the 
results  are  what  I  have  been  trying  to  outline 
in  the  previous  paragraphs.  It  is  an  error  not 
unlike  that  of  the  undergraduate:  an  admirable 
ambition,  prompted  by  loyalty  to  the  American 
spirit,  backed  by  praiseworthy  energy,  directed 
toward  a  goal  over  which  our  educational 
leaders  shake  their  heads. 

Well,  it  is  not  so  black  a  business  as  the 
excited  rhetoric  into  which  a  teacher  naturally 
falls  (and  here  apologizes  for)  would  make  it 
appear.  God's  in  His  heaven,  a  great  deal 
of  excellent  education  is  squeezing  somehow 
or  other  into  the  pores  of  an  awe-inspiring  num- 
ber of  fine  young  fellows.  If  it  were  not  that 
the  days  of  easy  success  were  passing;  if  it 
were  not  that  the  English,  the  French,  and  the 
German  competition  was  beginning  to  mean 
something;  if  it  were  not  that  we  Americans, 
having  made  our  country,  are  finding  that  we 
do  not  yet  know  how  to  live  in  it,  why,  then 
there  would  be  little  sense  in  all  this  sound 
and  fury.  But  all  these  things  are  true,  and 
soon  will  be  pressing. 

What  is  the  remedy?   In  principle,  it  is  very 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE 


simple;  in  detail  and  practice,  excessively 
difficult;  and  it  is  quite  beyond  my  power 
or  my  purpose  to  turn  it  into  a  formula  to  fit 
the  manifold  conditions  of  our  many  colleges. 
Surely  the  remedy  is  to  guide  the  current  instead 
of  fighting  against  it.  Bergson  has  convinced 
many  of  us  that  the  elan  vital,  the  life-force, 
is  far  too  subtle  to  be  comprehended  by  the 
mathematical  laws  of  science.  And  the  boy 
is  the  elan  vital!  We  must  realize  that  these 
waves  of  misguided  enthusiasm  which  beat 
through  our  colleges  are  part  of  the  national 
life,  and  cannot  be  made  to  run  backward. 
We  must  swing  their  energy  toward  some 
worthy  purpose.  It  is  a  weary  thing  for  the 
tired  teacher  to  say,  but  to  succeed  we  must 
intellectualize  the  business  and  scientific  energy 
of  the  country  (for  it  is  just  that  which  the 
undergraduate  displays  in  his  blind  and  im- 
mature fashion).  We  must  intellectualize  it 
as  a  century  ago  the  colleges  intellectualized 
the  professional  and  theological  energy.  And 
we  must  teach  the  student  how  to  live,  not  the 
life  of  Greece  or  Rome  or  Victorian  England, 
but  the  life  his  time  and  his  country  allow  him. 
In  comparison,  it  is  relatively  easy  to  make 

23 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

the  undergraduate  feel  that  the  things  of  the 
mind  are  at  least  as  interesting  as  the  things 
of  the  body.  But  to  do  this  we  must  have 
teachers  of  the  first  water;  we  must  have, 
above  all,  the  influences  of  the  home  back  of  us. 
We  must  have  time  and  intelligent  supp>ort. 
In  the  mean  while — even  though  the  Pharisees 
rage — do  not  be  too  severe  upon  our  strenuous, 
lovable  undergraduate.  Do  not  minimize  col- 
lege life;  rather  help  us  to  vitalize  it. 

Along  toward  the  end  of  Senior  year  they 
begin  to  come  out  to  see  you,  the  boys  that  you 
have  grown  to  know  well  and  be  fond  of.  And 
after  a  cigarette  or  two,  and  a  preliminary 
skirmish  on  the  prospects  of  the  crew,  or  last 
summer  in  Switzerland,  or  some  new  book, 
out  comes  the  real  diflSculty.  They  are  nervous 
about  next  year.  They  feel  hopelessly  in- 
capable, untrained,  ignorant.  The  things  they 
have  learned  to  do  well  have  lost  their  price. 
Of  course  they  joke  about  it,  and  so  do  you, 
but  the  feeling  is  there  underneath.  It  is  then 
that  you  realize  most  keenly  their  mistakes 
and  your  own;  then  that  you  feel  what  a 
delicate  mechanism  a  man  is,  and  how  difficult 
to  throw  into  gear.     And  it  is  only  when  they 

M 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE 


are  leaving,  only  when  they  begin  to  wake  up 
to  what  will  be  required  of  them,  that  they 
reach  the  mood  for  education,  the  mood  in 
which  even  we  blundering  professors  could 
make  education  a  success!  This  is  what  I 
regret. 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE 
BACKGROUND 

IT  must  have  occurred  to  many  to  explore 
the  background  of  the  Freshman's  mind, 
but  in  the  midst  of  endless  discussions  of  pre- 
paratory schools,  entrance  examinations,  and  all 
the  vast  and  creaking  machinery  of  American 
secondary  education  I  find  little  mention  of  it. 
Perhaps  the  results  have  seemed  too  confused 
for  publication.  Perhaps — and  this,  as  I  sit 
and  look  at  my  Freshman  class,  I  feel  to  be  the 
true  reason — a  fear  of  the  blank  and  empty 
stretches  which  may  lie  behind  their  agreeable 
faces,  a  dread  of  discovering  just  how  little 
background  the  undergraduate  does  possess, 
has  silenced  the  timorous  pedagogue. 

Occasionally  I  nerve  myself  to  overcome  this 
hesitancy,  prepare  for  shocks  and  disillusion- 
ments,  apply  my  probe,  and  proceed  to  reach 
the  minds  of  that  Freshman  class,  which  squirms 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE  BACKGROUND 

and  writhes  as  I  proceed.  They  are  not  alto- 
gether discouraging,  the  results  of  that  opera- 
tion. I  find  much  valuable  and  interesting 
material,  even  when  I  cannot  discover  the  in- 
tellectual equipment  that  the  college  has 
specified.  The  youth  who  confuses  Dogberry 
and  doggerel  has  well-developed  opinions  on 
morality.  He  who  describes  the  Puritans  in 
terms  of  the  Salvation  Army  is  nevertheless  a 
shrewd  judge  of  human  nature.  And  that 
quiet  fellow  in  the  corner,  who  belongs  to  a  new 
and  more  intellectual  America,  names  an  opera 
or  a  symphony  or  a  good  book  with  a  familiar- 
ity which  makes  me  blush  for  the  crude  rawness 
of  my  own  days  as  an  American  undergraduate. 
But  he  is  only  one,  and  well-nigh  everywhere 
else  I  find  a  bleak  ignorance — redeemed,  some- 
times, by  shrewdness,  persistence,  and  business 
ability,  but  very  different  from  the  sympathetic 
interest  in  knowledge  and  the  arts  which  should 
be  found  in  a  boy  who  is  ready  to  enter  college. 
When  we  declare,  after  examination  in  a 
number  of  definite  subjects,  that  a  boy  is  ready 
to  enter  our  institution,  and  then  are  displeased 
with  the  result,  it  is  this  deficiency  in  back- 
ground, I  think — this  poverty  in  intellectual 

27 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

interests — that  makes  the  trouble.  It  is  this 
that  explains  why  so  much  effort  is  wasted  in 
American  colleges.  Our  teaching  is  strewn  upon 
a  bare  and  barren  hinterland,  where,  finding  no 
soil  to  root  in,  it  dries  up  and  blows  away. 
And  if  a  liberal  education  displays  itself  in  so 
many  college  graduates  as  neither  liberal  nor 
an  education,  here  is  one  cause  that  it  is  folly 
to  neglect. 

I  never  fully  appreciated  the  importance 
of  the  Freshman's  background  until  the  ex- 
igencies of  bachelor  life  lodged  me  for  some 
years  in  the  midst  of  a  college  dormitory.  In 
those  years  I  made  what  was,  for  me,  a  great 
discovery  in  undergraduate  psychology.  I 
learned  that  many  a  boy  had  gone  through  a 
long  and  expensive  preparation  for  college 
with  no  perceptible  effect  on  his  intellectual 
interests;  and  this  made  me  realize  that  a 
college  course  must  possess  and  fructify  those 
desert  regions  where  the  Freshman  intellect 
pursues  its  nomadic  way,  or  be  a  waste  of  time 
that  might  as  profitably  be  spent  at  the 
"movies"  or  the  ball-game.  It  was  a  dis- 
couraging conviction  for  a  young  and  hard- 
worked  teacher;  but  it  was  the  truth. 

88 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE  BACKGROUND 

There  were  a  dozen  or  so  of  us  living  in  a 
kind  of  prairie-dog  settlement  about  a  great 
central  living-hall  on  which  all  our  rooms 
opened.  I  was  proctor,  but  under  the  influence 
of  a  common  living-room  the  rigid  barriers 
which  separate  the  teacher  and  the  taught 
weakened,  and  sometimes  broke  down.  There 
were  talks  while  we  shaved,  informal  calls  in 
dressing-gown  or  sweater,  and  (for  better 
evidence)  conversations  outside  my  closed  door, 
where  the  Freshman  revealed  himself  to  the 
reflective  instructor  with  startling,  clarity.  It 
was  a  highly  differentiated  gathering:  West, 
East,  South,  and  many  schools  had  contributed 
to  my  family.  One  is  a  writer  of  rising  distinc- 
tion now,  another  a  mining-engineer,  a  third 
a  successful  business  man,  a  fourth  (I  should 
judge)  one  of  the  pillars  of  the  Tenderloin. 
As  their  divergent  careers  indicate,  they  dif- 
fered as  much,  one  from  another,  as  boys  can 
differ,  which  is  only  a  little  less  than  men;  and 
yet  one  statement  could  be  made  for  nearly 
all:  the  sympathies,  the  prejudices,  the  knowl- 
edge they  had  gained  at  home  or  among  their 
schoolmates,  had  little  to  do  with  the  things 
they  had  learned  at  school.     It  was  the  first 

29 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

that  made  their  background.  It  was  there 
that  they  were  living.  The  second — their 
formal  training — was  held  in  suspension,  wait- 
ing, and  often  waiting  vainly,  to  pass  into  the 
life  processes. 

The  gulf  between  their  thought  and  their 
so-called  education  showed  itself  only  too 
clearly.  Sometimes  the  talk  would  go  on 
for  hour  after  endless  hour  in  trivialities  of 
"prep-school"  gossip,  second-hand  comment 
on  college  athletics,  wearisome  disputes  as  to 
who  said  this  or  who  said  that,  in  which  no  one 
was  interested  —  without  a  suggestion  of  the 
new  ideas  that  college  was  supposed  to  be  giving 
them.  But  this  was  merely  the  reticence  or 
the  fatigue  of  active  spirits.  Often  enough, 
if  personality  came  into  the  discussion,  or  prej- 
udice, or  achievements  that  touched  their 
imaginations,  they  would  take  fire;  and  when 
I  talked  with  them  alone,  it  was  seldom  that 
some  vitality  of  interest  did  not  reveal  itself. 
But  in  ideas — esthetic,  intellectual,  commercial, 
for  I  tried  them  all — they  were  not  interested. 

It  was  in  these  talks  that  I  came  to  under- 
stand the  magnitude  of  the  teacher's  problem. 

Thanks  to  the  narrowness  of  their  interests, 

80 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE  BACKGROUND 

the  subject-matter  of  civilization — history,  lit- 
erature, science — was  not  at  home  in  their 
minds.  They  received  instruction  as  the  Es- 
kimo receives  the  arts  of  the  white  man — po- 
litely, but  with  some  suspicion  and  not  a  little 
contempt.  And  yet,  unless  our  teaching  en- 
tered into  and  became  a  part  of  their  back- 
grounds, it  did  not  live  beyond  the  cooling  of 
the  breath.  I  quickly  discovered  that  the 
lesson  which  touched  no  chord  of  previous 
sympathy  had  to  fight  all  the  forces  of  youthful 
indifference,  and  speedily  dropped  away.  I 
soon  learned  that  a  quickening  appreciation 
was  due  as  much  to  some  old  influence  which 
time  had  welded  into  the  brain  as  to  the  teacher 
who  awoke  it.  And  when  there  was  nothing 
to  work  upon  we  worked  in  vain. 

The  banker's  son  from  New  York  was  clear- 
sighted and  quick  of  comprehension,  but  he 
had  lived  his  life  amid  ideals  of  profit  and 
physical  pleasure.  The  moral  philosophy  of 
English  literature  shed  from  his  brain  like  water 
from  a  roof.  The  son  of  the  Montana  miner 
had  a  heart  of  gold  and  common  sense  worth 
millions,  but  he  had  come  from  an  over-practical 

world  which  recognized  the  abstract  only  when 
3  31 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

it  was  sentimentaL  Thought  about  religion 
or  atoms  or  politics  or  poetry  passed  through 
his  head  and  left  never  a  path  behind  it. 
And  there  was  one  youth,  by  no  means 
the  most  intellectual,  or  even  the  most  lika- 
ble, who  seemed  to  clinch  the  argument.  He, 
it  seemed,  had  lived  in  a  family  where  food, 
business,  reprimand,  and  complaint  had  not 
been  the  only  topics  of  conversation.  His  mind 
was  stored  with  vague  interests  in  politics, 
science,  art,  vague  ambitions  toward  knowing 
"why  things  were  so,"  and  how  to  control  them; 
interests  and  ambitions  worthless  in  themselves 
because  of  their  very  vagueness.  He  knew 
nothing  definite,  he  could  do  nothing  well,  he 
had  always  been  at  the  middle  of  his  classes; 
he  was,  so  he  thought,  and  with  justice, 
mediocre.  Nevertheless,  that  boy  was  getting 
educated  while  the  rest  of  them  were  merely 
being  trained.  From  his  position  of  inferiority 
he  was  advancing,  and  he  iidvanced,  abreast 
of  and  then  beyond  them.  It  may  have  been 
delayed  ability.  I  do  not  think  so.  It  was 
rather  that,  thanks  to  the  sympathies  which 
had  been  rooted  in  his  mind,  his  thoughts  were 
hospitable  to  education.    I  doubt  whether  he 

32 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE  BACKGROUND 

has  made  as  much  money  as  the  rest  of  them. 
He  lacked  shrewdness  for  that.  But  I  know 
that  he  got  more  from  his  education;  and  I 
think  that  he  is  doing  more  with  his  life. 

That  boy  had  background — a  background 
not  so  much  of  knowledge  and  experience, 
though  all  that  he  had  was  valuable,  as  of 
awakened  intellectual  desires.  The  others,  with 
slight  exceptions,  had  not.  It  did  not  make 
them  less  excellent  fellows  to  know  and  to  live 
with.  It  did  not  affect  their  common  sense  or 
their  morality.  But  it  did  make  them  less 
interesting  to  talk  to;  for  once  outside  a  narrow 
range  of  athletics,  travel,  or  mutual  acquaint- 
ances, they  did  not  react.  And,  oh,  what  a 
difference  when  it  came  to  educating  them! 
It  was  painful  to  know  that,  failing  to  reach  the 
distant  background  where  the  boy  was  living, 
our  ardor  was  flung  away  for  trivial  results. 
But  at  least  it  explained  the  many,  many 
disappointments,  and  nerved  one  to  assault 
more  intelligently  the  well-guarded  citadel 
where  lurked  the  minds  of  the  Freshman  class. 

I  had  been  too  recently  an  undergraduate 
myself  to  feel  rancor.  It  seemed  the  established 
order  that  a  boy  should  come  to  college  keenly 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

alive  to  its  social  possibilities,  and  indiflferent 
to  ideas  and  to  culture.  It  seemed  a  notable 
triumph  for  the  university  when  I  considered 
how  many  men  of  my  college  generation  had 
emerged  with  minds  that  were  sweetened, 
made  liberal,  filled  full  of  useful  interests,  and 
ready  to  discriminate  among  the  values  of  life. 
I  praise  my  university  a  little  less  now  that, 
being  part  of  her,  I  realize  the  things  she  did 
not,  perhaps  could  not,  do  for  us.  But  against 
the  "established  order'*  and  its  self-satisfied 
indifference  I  am  in  revolt. 

Why  should  the  universities  have  to  take 
over  from  good  schools  and  comfortable  homes 
so  much  sodden  clay  into  which  only  a  new 
creation  could  put  the  breath  of  intellectual 
life?  Why  should  they  have  to  press  their 
wares  upon  the  unwilling  student  like  patent- 
medicine  venders?  Is  it  fair,  is  it  honest,  is  it 
wise  to  send  them  boys  who  might  want  educa- 
tion, yet  do  not;  who  might  be  interested  in 
knowledge,  yet  are  not;  whose  habit  of  mind 
is  opposed  to  all  cultivation  not  directly 
associated  with  elementary  pleasure  or  dollars 
and  cents?  The  critics  say,  If  you  gave  them  an 
education  adapted  to  modern  life  they  would 

34 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE  BACKGROUND 

not  be  indifferent  to  it.  Alas!  if  in  the  in- 
tellectual loafers  among  our  undergraduates 
I  could  discover  an  interest  in  any  kind  of 
education,  I  should  be  more  optimistic. 

I  am  not  complaining  of  the  preparation 
of  our  undergraduates,  in  the  strict,  scholastic 
sense  of  the  word.  That  is  our  problem.  I 
freely  admit  that  the  schools  might  teach  them 
more,  and  I  know,  of  course,  that  better  educa- 
tional methods  would  enrich  their  backgrounds 
as  well  as  increase  their  knowledge.  Indeed, 
I  see  a  dozen  instances  in  my  Freshman  classes 
where  this  has  been  true,  especially  among 
boys  who  have  been  subjected  to  the  superior 
discipline  and  richer  education  of  a  European 
school.  The  trouble  fundamentally  is  not  here — 
it  is  in  the  home.  In  the  first  of  these  essays  I 
said,  with  as  much  restraint  as  the  ruffled  spirit  of 
a  weary  teacher  would  permit,  that  the  parents 
who  sent  their  boys  to  college  to  "make  a  so- 
ciety" and  become  "good  mixers"  were  unjust, 
then  and  afterward,  to  the  boys  and  to  the  college. 
They  are  also  chiefly  to  blame,  these  parents,  for 
the  weak  and  pallid  background  of  the  under- 
graduate. And  it  is  in  the  home  that  children 
learn  a  bad  philosophy  of  getting  educated, 

35 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

To  speak  of  a  "philosophy  of  getting  educated" 
in  boys  of  seventeen  is  not  so  foolish  as  it  sounds. 
The  Freshmen,  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
have  a  very  definite  attitude  toward  "learning 
things,"  and  that  attitude  is  their  philosophy. 
Try  them  and  you  will  quickly  find  that  they 
have  taken  their  stand  already  as  regards 
"culture"  and  "mental  discipline,"  just  as  they 
have  taken  their  stand  in  moral  matters.  I  do 
not  refer  to  what  they  say.  The  undergradu- 
ates will  maintain  as  one  man  that  "culture" 
is  desirable.  The  most  flagrantly  epicurean 
and  wilfully  Philistine  members  of  my  class 
will  cheerfully  assert  in  writing,  and  over  their 
signatures,  that  from  the  bottom  of  their  hearts 
they  believe  "a  man  ought  to  broaden  his  mind 
by  studying  a  number  of  subjects"  in  college. 
And  the  laziest  Senior,  after  an  evening  at  a 
caf6  or  the  "movies,"  will  stroll  over  to  the 
class  polls  next  morning,  humming  "In  this 
college  life  there  is  rest,"  and  cheerfully  vote 
that  Phi  Beta  Kappa  was  what  he  most  desired 
in  college!  I  mean,  of  course,  what  they  feeU 
as  indicated  by  what  they  do.  And  it  is  not 
usually  the  school  that  makes  the  striking 
diflFerences  which  appear — diflferences  ranging 

S6 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE  BACKGROUND 

from  a  warm  and  fruitful  appreciation  to  a  dull 
and  indifferent  spirit.  It  is  the  philosophy 
which  they  drew  from  their  background — 
which  is  to  say,  from  their  environment,  and 
most  of  all  from  their  homes. 

American  parents  might  echo  the  regretful 
words  of  King  Lear,  who  had  "ta'en  too  little 
care"  of  the  social  errors  ripening  before  his 
unseeing  eyes.  Like  "big  business,"  and  the 
exploiters  of  our  natural  resources,  they  have 
allowed  the  period  of  excessive  individualism 
now  drawing  to  a  close  to  lead  them  into  serious 
errors  of  omission  and  commission.  In  the 
nineteenth  century,  religious  education  in  the 
home,  with  the  incidental  culture  that  accom- 
panied it,  began  to  decline.  Its  place  was 
taken  by  an  almost  superstitious  faith  in  the 
power  of  the  college  and  the  school.  Thousands 
of  American  parents  who  professed  to  desire 
cultivation  for  their  sons  and  daughters,  chose 
— through  modesty  or  laziness — the  method  of 
laissez-faire,  and  shifted  their  responsibility 
upon  formal  education.  The  mother  was  busy 
learning  the  ways  and  means  of  the  new 
luxury  which  in  the  '80's  began  to  be  obligatory 
for  socially  ambitious  Americans;    the  father 

37 

203185 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

was  still  busier,  earning  the  wherewithal  for 
the  process.  Both,  in  many  instances — I  judge 
by  results — gladly  welcomed  these  insidious 
theories  of  individualism  in  education.  Let 
us  put  the  boy  in  a  good  school,  they  said, 
where  of  course  he  will  become  educated.  Then, 
having  spared  no  expense  in  the  eflFort  to  give 
him  the  best  in  the  market,  they  washed  their 
hands  of  the  whole  affair,  and,  unless  he  was 
dropped  or  expelled,  concerned  themselves 
no  more  with  the  matter.  The  result  is  the 
^  college  problem  of  to-day — a  profusion  of  well- 
dressed,  well-mannered  boys,  fairly  well-trained, 
fairly  well-stocked  in  mind,  but  devoid  of  any 
active  interest  whatever  in  their  education. 

The  mistake  was  to  suppose  that  a  school  alone 
could  give  them  background.  By  what  miracle 
of  education  could  these  children  of  parents  in- 
different to  knowledge  and  scornful  of  culture 
be  endowed  in  the  schools  with  the  thing  that 
all  their  early  environment  had  taught  them 
to  neglect  or  despise!  It  was  too  late.  Instruc- 
tion, like  a  thunder-storm  above  rocky  summits, 
rumbled  and  burst  upon  their  impervious  heads, 
and  only  the  mental  habits  of  their  boy  com- 
panions, with  minds  as  immature  as  their  own, 

38 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE  BACKGROUND 

really  influenced  their  ways  of  thinking.  Thus 
at  school  they  lived  in  a  barbarous  age  of  their 
own  and  their  friends'  creating,  where  light, 
learning,  and  scientific  truth  were  viewed 
much  as  the  Crusaders,  who  stamped  Greek 
bronzes  into  coin  and  burned  marbles  for  lime, 
regarded  the  beauty  and  the  civilization  of 
ancient  Constantinople.  The  laissez-faire  meth- 
od, as  I  have  described  it,  may  have  increased 
self-confidence,  favored  manliness,  and  saved 
time  and  worry  for  the  American  parent,  but 
as  a  cultural  process  it  was  thoroughly  in- 
eflBcient. 

Well,  what  is  to  be  done  about  it?  Let  us 
suppose  that  we  desire  culture,  by  which  I 
mean  no  mere  affectation  of  knowledge,  nor 
any  power  of  glib  speech,  or  idle  command 
of  the  fopperies  of  art  and  literature,  but, 
rather,  an  intelligent  interest  in  the  possibilities 
of  living.  Indeed,  there  is  no  raison  d'etre  for 
the  college  of  liberal  arts  if  there  is  no  such 
desire.  Well,  what  is  to  be  done?  Buy  a 
library,  redecorate  the  living-room,  adopt  the 
broad  a,  enter  the  whole  family  in  the  nearest 
summer  school,  and  take  the  boys  to  "Gotter- 
dammerung"    instead    of    to    the    ball-game? 

39 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND   COLLEGE   FATHERS 

Such  a  method  of  providing  a  background  in  a 
hurry  has  been  tried,  with  results  that  our 
native  playwrights  have  failed  to  grasp  only 
because  their  fondness  for  melodrama  has 
dulled  their  sense  of  humor. 

And  yet  even  a  college  professor  can  see 
remedies — partial,  to  be  sure,  yet  remedies 
that  will  bring  relief. 

The  first  is  to  be  honest.  If  you  are  content 
with  an  education  for  your  children  that  gives 
a  certain  amount  of  superficial  information, 
to  be  acquired  while  they  are  making  friends, 
advancing  socially,  and  preparing  to  come  out 
of  college  "good  mixers,"  if  not  educated  men 
and  women,  why,  then,  be  honest  about  it, 
teach  them  to  be  honest,  and  do  not  deceive 
yourself  or  them  into  supposing  that  it  is  cul- 
ture you  are  after,  or  culture  that  they  have 
got.  For  some  undergraduates  this  is  the 
best,  indeed  it  is  the  only  course,  though  for 
most  it  is  perdition.  Some  minds  can  absorb, 
and  some  will  absorb,  no  more  than  a  certain 
measure,  even  though  deans  and  faculties  and 
educational  journals  rage.  Once  they  get 
into  college,  one  must  make  the  best  of  them. 
The  college  will  suffer.     But  then  education 

40 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE  BACKGROUND 

has  always  had  to  carry  dead  weight,  and  will 
continue  to  do  so  until  some  new  economic 
order  makes  it  necessary  for  every  one  to  work 
for  a  living. 

If  the  lazy-minded  are  honest,  they  are  not 
dangerous  —  one  learns  to  accept  them,  like 
humidity  and  flies.  It  is  the  men  who  are  not 
honest  that  corrupt  college  life,  the  men  who 
wish  to  turn  college  into  a  social  institution 
and  call  that  culture,  or  into  an  athletic  compe- 
tition and  call  that  education,  or  into  a  mold 
of  character  or  good  manners,  and  call  that 
intellectual  training.  If  they  were  honest  with 
themselves,  if  you  were  honest  with  them, 
they  could  not  be  so  deluded.  They  would 
either  frankly  admit  that  their  goal  was  not 
intellectual  development,  and  so  become  less 
dangerous;  or  turn  more  of  their  admirable 
energies  into  training  the  mind,  and  so  become 
really  valuable;  or  stay  away  from  college. 
I  do  not  believe  that  many  are  the  worse  for 
their  college  course,  since  our  undergraduate 
life  has  a  wonderful  vigor  and  sweetness,  which 
enriches  often  where  it  does  not  educate. 
But  such  men  can  do  incalculable  harm  to 
their  colleges. 

41 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

Of  course  there  are  many  fathers — especially 
among  business  men — who  frankly  do  not 
beheve  in  culture,  and  who  are  quite  willing 
that  their  children  should  get  the  associations 
of  college  life  with  the  modicum  of  cultivation 
which  cannot  be  escaped.  I  have  another  and 
equally  serious  quarrel  with  them,  which  de- 
mands more  space  than  this  essay  can  afford. 
They  at  least  are  honest.  Their  prejudices 
are  due  to  a  well-grounded  distrust  of  the  in- 
tellectual fops  and  dry-as-dust  pedants  who 
will  sometimes  develop  as  excrescences  upon  the 
cultural  process.  Or,  if  not  prejudice,  it  is  a 
wilful  ignorance  of  what  the  colleges  mean  by 
culture  that  misleads  them,  and  a  wilful  blind- 
ness to  the  kind  of  intellect  that  will  be  re- 
quired of  the  next  generation.  But  my  quar- 
rel here  is  with  the  parents  who  profess  to 
believe  in  college  education. 

If,  being  such  a  parent,  you  are  not  content 
with  the  ambiguous  training  desired  by  the 
advocate  of  "country -club  colleges";  if  you 
belong  to  the  new  generation  which  has  begun 
to  realize  that  the  complexities  and  competi- 
tions of  modern  life  are  crying  for  intelligence 
to  master  them,  and  that  even  millions  are 

48 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE  BACKGROUND 

growing  difficult  to  spend;  if  you  demand  a 
training  for  your  children  that  will  stir  the 
inner  virtues  of  the  mind  —  why,  then,  two 
courses  are  open.  Granted  schools  and  colleges 
as  good  as  one  can  provide — and  they  are  not 
yet  good  enough  for  the  splendid  material  that 
America  is  breeding — it  is  indispensable  that 
there  be,  in  addition,  either  background,  with 
all  it  implies,  or  a  heartfelt  desire  for  educa- 
tion. 

Now  it  should  not  be  difficult  to  give  the  cur- 
rent Freshman  a  proper  background.  Colleges 
in  America  have  spread  with  incredible  rapidity. 
But  they  have  spread  no  faster  than  homes 
where  all  the  appliances  of  civilization  are  at 
hand.  The  background  of  culture,  thanks 
largely  to  our  women,  is  available  in  many, 
if  not  in  most,  families  of  moderate  means. 
But,  unfortunately,  it  is  not  yet  our  background. 
We  are  a  little  restive  before  it — suspicious  of 
its  refinements,  contemptuous  of  its  luxuries. 
It  is  like  a  new  fashion,  worn  awkwardly,  scorn- 
fully, by  practical  men,  if  worn  at  all.  And 
the  hearty  young  barbarians,  who  always 
imitate  those  they  love  best,  magnify  our  sus- 
picions, our  contempts,  and  go  off  to  school 

43 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS    • 

and  college  with  that  for  their  intellectual  and  ^ 

esthetic  philosophy.  ■ 

It  is  hard  at  middle  age  to  broaden  tastes, 
to  become  interested  in  thought,  to  learn  to 
use  as  well  as  to  possess  the  possibilities  of 
living  that  a  good  income  and  the  twentieth 
century  put  before  us.  And  yet,  if  the  chil- 
dren are  to  be  given  a  fair  start  in  the  more 
intellectual  period  that  is  certainly  coming, 
the  effort  must  be  contemplated.  Unless  they 
are  strong  enough  to  break  away  from  their 
first  environment — and  many  are  not — school 
alone  will  never  bring  culture  with  it,  nor  will 
college. 

The  families  who  lack  the  apparatus  and  the 
atmosphere  of  fine  living,  whether  through  the 
hampering  poverty  of  a  tenement  flat  or  the 
distracting  riches  of  a  new-made  million,  are 
handicapped,  perhaps,  but  in  no  sense  deprived 
of  the  opportunity  to  give  education  a  fair 
chance.  They  may  not  be  able  to  insure  for 
their  children  a  background  rich  in  experience 
of  the  arts  of  life,  but  they  can  inculcate  the 
desire  for  one;  and  in  youth,  desire  is  even  bet- 
ter than  possession.  There  may  be  bad  pictures 
on  the  wall,  cheap  books  on  the  shelves,  narrow 

44 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE  BACKGROUND 

talk  or  none  at  all  at  table,  and  yet  the  boy 
who  emerges  from  such  an  environment  may 
be  surer  of  awakening  his  intellectual  being 
than  the  son  of  an  art-collector  or  a  patron  of 
symphony  concerts — if  he  really  wants  to  be 
educated.  Neither  poverty  nor  riches  is  the 
determining  factor.  In  either  case,  the  wish 
to  know  truly  and  to  feel  truly  can  be  instilled, 
if  there  is  the  will  to  instil  it.  And  such  a 
longing  wins  against  any  odds. 

In  one  respect,  at  least,  the  youth  who  must 
fight  his  way  out  of  utter  Philistinism,  or  the 
barren  environment  of  the  poor,  is  better  off 
than  he  who  enters  college  already  acquainted 
with  the  liberal  arts.  He  has  rubbed,  and 
rubbed  hard,  against  the  basic  necessities  of 
life — need  of  food,  need  of  clothes,  need  of 
money — or  at  least  his  parents  have  made  him 
familiar  with  those  incorrigible  realities  which 
came  before  the  arts  and  will  stay  after  them. 
And  the  saving  practicality  that  comes  with 
hard-earned  sustenance,  and  remains  when  the 
stress  and  the  i)inch  are  past,  will  save  him 
from  the  poses,  the  potterings,  and  the  fopperies 
that  accompany  culture  too  easily  won,  and 
make    it — what    all    culture    seems    to    many 

45 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

Americans — an  ornament,  rather  than  an  aid 
to  a  richer  and  more  purposeful  life. 

There  is  no  getting  round  it.  If  we  wish 
the  colleges  to  instil  culture,  we  must  either 
become  cultivated  ourselves,  or  by  some  other 
means  make  our  children  desirous  of  culture. 
Even  so,  the  problem  will  not  be  solved.  In- 
eflBcient  teachers  will  remain  to  be  reckoned 
with,  especially  since  we  shall  probably  con- 
tinue to  refuse  to  give  them  enough  income 
to  keep  what  culture  they  possess  at  the  boiling- 
point.  And  there  are  few  schools  and  few 
colleges  in  which  outworn,  ineffective  methods 
do  not  here  and  there  hold  back  even  the  willing 
mind  from  a  full  measure  of  accomplishment. 
The  sociologist  will  remark  that  there  is  also 
heredity.  It  is  still  true  that  you  cannot  make 
a  silk  purse  out  of  a  sow's  ear,  and  as  there  are 
boys  who  would  become  educated  in  Greenland 
or  Nigeria,  so,  as  I  have  already  admitted, 
there  are  others  whose  brains  permit  of  only 
a  moderate  education,  strive  as  we  may.  But 
the  psychologists  and  anthropologists  now 
give  us  reason  to  believe  what  conmion  sense 
has  long  taught — that  the  power  of  environ- 
ment, if  not  absolute,  is  at  least  greater  than 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE  BACKGROUND 

any  other  shaping  influence  upon  the  mind. 
Environment  cannot  make,  though  it  may  mar, 
genius  or  even  talent;  but  a  bad  heredity  will 
not  prevent  a  boy  in  a  favorable  environment 
from  acquiring  an  adequate  education. 

A  far  more  serious  problem  is  to  determine 
just  what  true  culture  is  going  to  be  for  the  next 
generation,  so  that  the  bewildered  parent  may 
adequately  prepare  for  it.  Few  will  agree  as  to 
its  probable  nature,  and  in  the  particular  forms 
of  education  and  environment  by  which  we 
try  to  instil  it  there  is  abundant  room  for 
legitimate  differences  of  opinion.  But  no  one 
will  deny,  I  think,  that  a  mind  eager  to  get  at  y 
the  truth  and  willing  to  enjoy  the  best  is  a 
chief  requisite  in  any  conceivable  educational 
program. 

4 


THE  PROFESSOR 

THE  college  professor  as  he  appears  in 
American  novels  and  upon  the  American 
stage  is  so  picturesque  that  I  should  like  to 
forget  the  dangers  of  the  caricature.  He  is 
presented  as  a  mild  individual,  with  vacant 
eyes,  an  absent  mind,  a  long  beard,  and  untidy 
clothes.  This  imagined  professor  wears  loose 
slippers  in  his  study,  and  looks  through  steel- 
rimmed  glasses  on  a  world  which  does  not  con- 
cern him.  The  passions  touch  him  not,  and 
in  the  presence  of  dollars  and  cents  or  other 
facts  of  existence  he  displays  a  touching  helpn 
lessness  which  is  charmingly  humorous.  He 
lives  serene  and  untroubled  among  bis  books, 
dreams  beautiful  dreams,  sees  attractive  but 
unprofitable  visions,  and  economically  and 
politically  is  supposed  to  rank  with  the  women- 
folk, as  intermediate  between  the  real  men  and 
the  paupers,  feeble-minded,  and  Indians  untaxed. 

48 


THE  PROFESSOR 


The  average  American  knows  that  this 
slippered  gentleman  is  a  product  of  the  genial 
imagination  of  our  comedy-makers,  and  yet 
his  own  conception  of  the  college  professor  is 
not  much  nearer  the  truth.  He  imagines  him, 
if  my  observations  are  correct,  as  a  dignified 
but  severe  individual  with  a  trimmed  beard, 
a  cold  eye,  and  a  mysterious  interest  in  subjects 
of  no  earthly  use  to  anybody.  He  believes 
him  to  be  indifferent  to  the  necessities,  and 
unsympathetic  with  the  pleasures,  of  every- 
day existence.  Although  he  respects  his  cul- 
tivation and  is  impressed  by  the  extent  of  his 
knowledge,  in  his  heart  of  hearts  he  still  feels, 
in  spite  of  recent  instances  to  the  contrarj^ 
that  the  professor  is  futile  in  active  life,  and 
therefore  merely  ornamental  in  our  civilization. 

The  truth  is  that  the  average  American 
knows  very  little  about  the  college  professor, 
and  takes  few  pains  to  know  more.  My  legal 
friend,  who  motors  in  and  out  from  his  country 
residence  and  has  time  for  golf  in  the  afternoon 
apd  the  theater  or  reading  every  evening,  talks 
to  me  enviously  of  the  otium  cum  dignitate 
of  life  in  the  academic  shades,  and  does  not 
heed    my    ironic    reply.     The    business    man, 

49 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

who  knows  that  I  have  three  months  a  year 
free  from  college  duties,  assumes  that  it  is  all 
vacation,  and  smiles  indulgently  when  I  speak 
of  my  summer  work.  In  discussions  of  aflFairs 
our  comments  are  likely  to  be  dismissed  as 
impractical — undoubtedly  they  often  are  so 
— before  they  are  heard,  on  the  principle  that 
governed  the  medievals  when  they  distrusted 
in  advance  all  that  a  lawyer  might  have  to 
say  of  religion.  And  it  is  clear  what  the  finan- 
cial world  thinks  of  us,  since  every  wildcat 
enterprise  sends  its  circulars  to  all  the  names  on 
the  college  catalogue;  strong  evidence  that  it 
knows  little  about  the  college  community,  for 
few  professors  have  a  surplus  worth  steahng. 
After  all,  the  animal  does  not  differ  so  much 
from  the  rest  of  the  community;  in  fact,  he 
is  scarcely  a  different  species.  The  modern 
professor  is  more  usually  a  man  of  the  world 
than  a  recluse.  He  knows  good  cigars,  as 
well  as  good  pictures  and  good  books.  He 
enjoys  his  club  with  a  very  human  enjoy- 
ment. As  a  golfer  or  tennis-player  he  is  often 
above  the  average.  His  talk,  if  a  trifle  dog- 
matic and  inclined  to  stray  from  the  cardinal 
American    topics  —  business,    athletics,    auto- 

50 


THE  PROFESSOR 


mobiles,  and  anecdotes — is  rarely  pedantic, 
and  far  more  intelligible  than  the  dialect  of 
the  motorist  or  the  jargon  of  baseball.  If  he 
wears  unfashionable  clothes,  they  more  often 
indicate  an  unfortunate  economic  condition 
than  a  disregard  of  his  neighbors,  and  when  he 
holds  back  from  social  and  municipal  activities 
it  is  often  for  the  same  reason.  If  he  is  little 
skilled  in  commerce,  at  least  he  knows  as  much 
of  the  banker's,  the  lawyer's,  or  the  manu- 
facturer's business  as  they  do  of  his;  perhaps 
more.  Prick  him  in  his  pride,  his  purse,  his 
likings,  or  his  intolerances,  and  he  will  bleed 
quite  as  if  he  were  a  financier  or  a  politician. 
In  short,  he  is  human. 

This  being  true,  it  is  curious  that  he  should 
be  regarded  as  unsympathetic,  as  indifferent 
to  the  life  about  him.  Indeed,  if  there  is 
indifference,  I  believe  that  it  is  quite  as  much 
America's  as  the  professor's.  It  is  not  pleasant 
to  be  held  at  arm's-length  from  life.  It  is 
irritating  to  meet  constantly  with  the  assump- 
tion that  intellectual  interests  are  alien  to 
human  nature.  And  the  professor,  not  wisely, 
perhaps,  but  quite  humanly,  sometimes  retal- 
iates.    The  business  man  who  patronizes  or  is 

51 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE   FATHERS 

indifferent  to  the  world  of  thought,  is  too  often 
held  in  contempt  among  academic  coteries. 
I  do  not  defend  this  attitude,  especially  when  it 
rises  to  superciliousness;  nevertheless,  it  is  com- 
prehensible. But  the  professor  with  whom  I  am 
most  familiar  seems  to  me  to  be  almost  patheti- 
cally interested  in  the  details  of  practical  life,  as 
if  anxious  to  confirm  the  theory  it  is  his  business 
to  teach.  And  this  is  what  one  would  expect 
as  the  result  of  his  profession.  The  study  of 
biology,  or  medieval  history,  or  Shakesi>eare 
is  quite  as  human  as  soap-making;  teaching 
surely  exercises  the  sympathies  as  much  as 
managing  a  factory  or  selling  land.  In  short, 
I  am  driven  to  the  conclusion  that  the  lack  of 
harmony  between  the  teacher  and  the  parents 
of  those  he  must  teach  begins  more  often  with- 
out than  within  the  colleges.  Its  dangers,  its 
effects  upon  teaching,  I  shall  touch  upon  later. 
I  fear  there  is  little  doubt  that  the  average 
American  regards  the  professor  as  ornamental, 
and  in  recognizing  this  fact  I  am  not  so  resentful 
as  afraid — ^afraid  of  the  results.  Why  deny  the 
fact?  Reason  instructs  us  that  some  one  must 
teach  our  children,  that  knowledge  must  be  ac- 
cumulated, culture  presented,  thoughts  set  ger- 

5« 


THE  PROFESSOR 


minating;  but  we  continue  to  feel,  nevertheless, 
that  our  professors  are  merely  necessary  con- 
ventions associated  with  the  finishing-schools, 
called  colleges,  to  which  we  send  our  boys  for  an 
experience  which  custom  makes  necessary,  in 
the  hope  that  they  may  learn  what  it  is  better 
for  them  to  know,  and  emerge  with  the  social 
position  which  they  must  possess.  The  place 
of  the  professor  in  this  process  is  felt  to  be 
time-honored  and  eminently  respectable.  With 
the  college  songs,  the  college  curriculum,  and 
the  college  bills,  he  is  part  of  the  life  which  we 
are  buying  for  our  children.  But  we  expect 
little  more  of  him.  If  our  youngsters  express 
enthusiasm  for  his  personality,  his  ideas,  or 
his  work,  we  are  mildly  uneasy,  fearing  the 
fanatic  or  the  crank.  I  am  trying  to  voice 
the  sentiments  of  a  typical  American,  which  is 
to  say  a  commercial,  community;  not,  mind 
you,  what  they  say,  or  what  they  think,  but 
what  they  feel.  Perhaps  I  am  unjust,  but  I 
do  not  think  so.  I  myself  come  from  a  business 
family  and  a  business  community. 

The  results  might  have  been  as  disastrous 
for  the  college  professor  as  an  equivalent  at- 
titude has  proved  for  certain  branches  of  the 

53 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

clergy.  The  professor  has  been  expected  to  be 
ornamental;  it  has  sometimes  been  made  clear 
that  if  he  were  content  with  a  living  wage  he 
would  be  allowed — nay,  encouraged — to  con- 
tinue in,  a  merely  ornamental  capacity.  Neither 
as  scholar  nor  as  teacher  has  he  often  suc- 
cumbed to  the  temptation;  he  has  usually 
been  unaware  of  it;  and  this  is  due  solely,  I 
think,  to  the  absorbing  interest  of  modem 
scholarship,  and  still  more  to  his  artistic  con- 
science— for  teaching  is  an  art. 

Nevertheless,  as  critics  of  our  colleges  have 
numerously  testified,  the  professor  has  not 
satisfied  America.  Nor  will  he  until  America 
takes  his  work  more  seriously.  The  business 
of  the  professor  consists  of  teaching  and  re- 
search. Research  will  probably  take  care  of 
itself.  Its  results  are  tangible — so  tangible 
that  even  a  commercial  generation  is  begm- 
ning  to  approve  them — and  its  fascination  is 
great.  Furthermore,  since  the  products  of 
successful  research  can  be  weighed  and  tested 
with  little  difficulty  and  without  undue  strain 
upon  the  judgment,  college  promotions  have 
been  most  frequently  made  upon  an  estimate 
of  research.     A  book  published  is  clear  evi- 

M 


THE  PROFESSOR 


dence  for  or  against  a  candidate.  But  good 
teaching  is  elusive,  subject  to  false  testimony, 
slow  in  its  effects,  hard  to  estimate,  requiring 
time  and  trouble  to  search  out.  Hence  it  is 
important  that  the  outside  world  should  en- 
deavor to  encourage  the  teacher,  should  demand 
much  of  him,  and  pay  him  in  appreciation  for 
what  it  gets.  Hence  if  it  thinks  the  teacher 
merely  ornamental,  it  strikes  a  blow  at  him  and 
itself. 

Even  under  circumstances  that  might 
dampen  enthusiasm,  ardent,  eager  teaching 
has  certainly  not  slackened  in  our  colleges. 
It  takes  more  than  indifference  to  curb  an  art. 
When  I  first  began  to  teach,  I  found  myself 
one  of  a  group  of  youngsters,  all  novices  and 
all  enthusiasts.  Some  of  us  had  consciously 
aimed  from  the  beginning  at  the  academic 
life;  some  of  us  had  drifted  into  it,  lured  by  its 
opportunities  or  repelled  by  the  impossibility 
of  doing  elsewhere  the  things  that  interested 
us.  But  all  were  united  by  a  common  resolve. 
We  had  come  under  good  teachers  in  school 
and  college.  But  we  had  also  come  under  bad 
teachers.  And  we  were  resolved  that  if  we 
could  not  get  results  from  our  work — once  we 

55 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

had  mastered  it — ^if  we  could  not  keep  vivid, 
alive,  and  awake  in  the  lecture  chair — we  would 
give  up  the  profession  and  go  into  what  those 
who  have  never  taught  call  "the  active  life." 
I  suppose  that  we  are  all  a  little  disillusioned 
by  now.  I  suppose  all  of  us  are  uncertain, 
as  at  the  beginning,  of  how  much  we  can  teach; 
that  all  of  us  are  aware  that  the  results  of  teach- 
ing must  often  be  seen  by  the  eyes  of  faith. 
But  none  of  us  have  thrown  up  our  profession 
and  gone  into  the  world;  none  of  us  have  wished 
to  do  so.  The  art  of  teaching  is  too  absorbing. 
My  friends  outside  the  college  gates  say  to 
me,  "How  monotonous  it  must  be  to  teach  the 
same  thing  over  and  over!"  Nonsense!  You 
never  teach  the  same  thing  twice;  how  can  you, 
when  each  time  it  must  be  fitted  to  different 
minds?  They  say,  "How  tiresome  to  be  always 
shouting  at  unwilling  ears!"  Tiresome!  The 
more  unwilling,  the  more  adventurous  is  the 
effort.  And  even  the  cultural  neglect  in  the 
American  home,  and  the  curious  intellectual 
deadening  that  seems  to  occur  in  many 
American  preparatory  schools,  have  not  made 
these  student  minds  unwilling.  Frequently 
sluggish,  sometimes  inattentive  perhaps,  but 


THE  PROFESSOR 


not  consciously  unwilling;  and  if  unconsciously 
so,  then  hostile  not  to  the  teacher,  but  to  the 
new  idea  or  the  discipline  of  thought.  I  speak 
as  one  largely  ignorant  of  the  battles  of  the 
market-place  and  stock-exchange,  which  our 
weekly  story-papers  have  made  so  romantic, 
and  thus  am  subject  to  correction;  yet  I  dare 
assert  that  few  experiences  in  the  run  of  daily 
work  are  more  stimulating,  more  exciting,  than 
teaching. 

I  do  not  mean  that  the  performance  is 
thrilling  for  the  class — undergraduates  quickly 
become  callous  to  all  but  the  strongest  stimuli. 
But  to  the  sensitive  teacher  the  hour  is  charged 
with  quicksilver.  You  see  the  minds  of  the 
thirty-odd  men  below  you  in  their  faces.  You 
feel  their  response  when  the  current  of  interest 
sets  strongly,  and  your  points  tell.  You  feel 
the  relapse  when,  one  after  another,  they  begin 
to  drift  away,  and  must  be  swung  back,  like 
particles  in  the  field  of  an  electro-magnet,  by 
some  stronger  charge  of  electricity,  some  more 
vigorous  effort  in  yourself.  It  is  nervous 
work,  but  it  is  quite  as  interesting,  I  think,  as  a 
business  deal  or  a  lawsuit;  and  the  materials 
with  which  one  works  are  far  more  agreeable; 

57 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND   COLLEGE  FATHERS 

the  results — when  there  are  results — of  an 
importance  infinitely  great. 

In  short,  teaching  is  a  public  service  in  which 
enthusiasm  is  easy,  but  a  service  of  infinite 
delicacy  upon  which  real  or  apparent  failure 
always  waits.  How  essential  is  it  that  the 
public  should  be  indifferent  neither  to  the  short- 
comings nor  to  the  success  of  the  teacher!  How 
important  that  the  work  into  which  he  throws 
himself  should  be  held  more  than  perfunctory, 
more  than  ornamental !  How  foolish  to  cool  the 
eager  artist  at  his  task,  when  that  task  is,  or 
should  be,  the  shaping  of  the  next  generation! 

Lideed,  the  thrust  goes  beyond  the  professor. 
It  is  the  community  that  suffers.  The  teacher 
will  teach,  if  he  is  worth  anything,  until  he  is 
muzzled.  And  if  he  is  a  scholar  he  will  devote 
himself  to  the  most  difficult  research.  But  the 
breed  is  human.  They  would  certainly  teach 
better,  their  research  might  be  better  directed, 
if  the  public,  their  actual  employers,  were  less 
indifferent  to  their  work.  Ask  and  it  shall  be 
given  unto  you.  America  asks  too  little  of  the 
college  professor. 

Nor  is  he  sufficiently  rewarded.  I  do  not 
wish  to  harp  upon  the  ancient  theme  of  the 

5S 


THE  PROFESSOR 


underpaid  professor.  That  plaint  has  grown 
tiresome  to  academic  as  well  as  to  unaca- 
demic  ears,  the  more  so  since  it  should  never 
have  been  a  complaint,  but  a  warning.  The 
professor  is  not  the  greatest  sufferer.  His 
life  is  primarily  a  life  of  the  mind.  He  is  in 
possession  of  resources  not  so  readily  opened  to 
the  practical  man  of  affairs.  If  he  cannot 
afford  automobiles  and  the  opera,  nevertheless 
books,  nature,  and  the  greatest  of  recreations, 
thinking,  are  his  by  right  of  conquest  and 
opportunity.  If  he  must  mix  the  petty  ir- 
ritants of  bill  days,  mortgage  dates,  and  life- 
insurance  payments  with  the  proper  atmosphere 
of  his  work,  nevertheless  that  work  is  more 
purely  congenial,  more  rewarding  in  itself, 
more  stimulating  than  any  other,  except,  per- 
haps, painting,  music,  or  literature.  It  is  not 
the  professor  who  suffers  most  from  the  limi- 
tations that  the  lack  of  a  true  living  wage 
imposes  upon  him;  it  is  not  even  his  wife. 
He  is,  it  is  true,  most  unfortunately  cramped 
by  this  condition.  Many  and  many  a  man 
has  never  taken  the  sabbatical  year  which  his 
college  allows  him  for  stimulus  and  investiga- 
tion, because  he  could  not  afford  it.     I  remem- 

59 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

bcr  a  talk  of  pictures,  of  cathedrals,  of  men 
and  thoughts  in  European  cities  with  an  aging 
professor  of  rhetoric  in  a  small  college.  Never 
have  I  known  a  man  more  sensitive  to  the 
impressions  of  other  cultures;  not  many  men, 
to  judge  from  his  work,  have  been  so  capable 
of  turning  all  experience,  and  especially  such 
experience,  to  profitable  ends;  but  his  talk 
was  of  London  and  Paris  in  the  'seventies;  of 
conditions  now  merely  historical,  of  men  long 
dead.  He  had  gone  abroad  when  graduated 
from  college.  In  forty  years  of  service  he  had 
never  been  able  to  go  again.  Of  course,  if 
he  had  not  married !  But  then  they  will  marry, 
these  professors!  And  here,  too,  there  are 
limitations.  A  college  statistician  has  recently 
asserted  that  on  the  present  salary  basis  the 
professor  can  hope  to  afford,  on  the  average, 
two-fifths  of  a  child!  Again,  if  the  professor 
lives  a  life  apart  in  order  that  he  may  be  thrown 
neither  with  his  economic  equals,  who  are 
culturally  and  educationally  his  inferiors,  nor 
with  his  educational  equals,  who  set  a  financial 
pace  he  cannot  follow — if  he  lives  a  life  apart, 
he  must  forfeit  the  place  in  the  community 
that  every   self-respecting  citizen   desires;   he 

60 


THE  PROFESSOR 


must  forfeit  influence,  and  condemn  himself 
to  a  narrow  society.  But  lie  is  not  the  chief 
sufferer.  With  all  its  minor  hardships,  his 
life  is  on  the  whole  the  most  attractive  that 
America  offers. 

The  chief  sufferer,  of  course,  is  the  commu- 
nity. The  factory  of  knowledge  is  operated  for 
it.  In  the  long  run  it  controls  the  finances, 
and  it  controls  the  output.  If  it  is  pleased  to 
run  the  plant  on  a  short  allowance  of  lubricant 
and  fuel,  there  should  be  no  quarrel  with  re- 
sults. The  engines  whir  along;  some  of  them 
as  fast  as  they  can,  some  of  them  too  slowly. 
And  the  stockholders,  having  paid  for  the 
installation,  shut  up  their  pockets,  and  are 
content  to  criticize  (with  more  severity  than 
discrimination)  the  imperfectly  finished  product 
which  their  education  turns  out.  Ask  and  it 
shall  be  given  unto  you.  If  you  wish  better 
education,  ask  for  it  as  strenuously  and  as 
intelligently  as  you  ask  for  dividends;  pay 
reasonably  for  it;  and  you  will  get  it.  If  you 
desire  that  this  inspiring  profession  should  be 
either  crowded  with  incompetents  or  open 
only  to  men  of  independent  fortunes,  continue 
to  keep  down  the  wage  of  the  professor  while 

61 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

the  cost  of  living  rises  and  you  will  get  just  that 
result  with  all  its  attendant  dangers.  And, 
finally,  if  you  wish  that  your  colleges  should 
be  mere  finishing-schools,  be  careful  lest  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  professor  dulls,  and  you  get 
your  wish.  The  profession  of  teaching  and 
the  profession  of  research  are  highly  agreeable 
and  highly  stimulating.  But,  like  the  other 
professions,  they  have  their  full  share  of  the 
weaknesses  of  human  nature.  They  are  equally 
liable  to  sluggishness,  equally  dei)endent  upon 
the  attitude  of  the  community.  Deny  or 
hamper  their  usefulness,  and  they  will  be- 
come less  useful;  ask  much  of  them,  and  you 
will  get  some  part  at  least  of  that  for  which 
you  ask. 

I  have  written  in  my  first  essay  of  the  lova- 
ble, energetic,  misguided  undergraduate,  and  of 
the  tact,  the  skill,  and  the  guiding  force  which 
are  necessary  if  he  is  to  be  really  educated. 
It  is  here  that  the  defects  of  the  professor 
most  quickly  show  themselves.  And  it  is  here 
that  the  already  discussed  attitude  of  average 
America  toward  the  professor  and  things  in- 
tellectual, an  attitude  that  is  certainly  indif- 
ferent, and  perhaps  just  a  little  contemptuous, 


THE  PROFESSOR 


works  the  greatest  harm.  For  this  attitude 
makes  teaching  difficult,  and  it  makes  it  dijQS- 
cult  to  get  good  men  to  teach. 

A  really  good  professor  should  be  a  Cerberus 
— three  gentlemen  at  once.  He  should  be 
able  to  teach;  and  though  the  desire  to  teach 
is  strong  and  common,  the  power  to  teach,  as 
we  who  try  know,  is  slow  of  growth  and  rare 
in  its  achievement.  He  should  be  a  good 
scholar;  for,  aside  from  the  value  of  successful 
research,  good  teaching,  as  is  well  known, 
seldom  proceeds  except  from  a  mind  trained 
in  fruitful  investigation,  deep  stored  with  knowl- 
edge, and  creative  in  science,  in  criticism,  or 
in  the  realm  of  the  imagination.  The  conflict 
between  teaching  and  research,  of  which  we 
hear  so  much,  is  like  the  conflict  of  science  and 
religion.  It  exists  only  through  a  misunder- 
standing. It  exists  only  because  of  the  prone- 
ness  of  the  academic  authorities  to  recognize 
the  scholarly  rather  than  the  educational  man- 
ifestations of  a  power  that  all  good  teachers 
should  possess.  Finally,  the  professor  should 
be  an  admirably  sane,  admirably  broad,  ad- 
mirably human  individual.  And,  really,  such 
a  man  is  not  to  be  had  by  advertising  in  the 

5  63 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

evening  paper  or  by  corresponding   with  an 
employment  agency. 

Actually,  the  American  attitude  toward  the 
academic  profession  makes  the  task  doubly 
difficult.  Time  and  again  American  parents 
who  have  amassed  money  enough  for  their 
children's  children,  or  a  whole  college  faculty, 
are  led  by  a  curious  distrust  of  the  intellectual 
life — or  is  it  contempt  for  the  mere  teacher? — 
to  drag  away  the  promising  son  who,  in  tastes, 
in  desires,  and  in  ability,  has  shown  himself 
qualified  for  the  academic  profession,  in  order 
to  thrust  him  into  business,  where  against  his 
will  he  makes  more  money.  We,  in  our  clois- 
tered simplicity,  are  at  a  loss  to  understand 
their  point  of  view.  But  we  understand  too 
clearly  the  limitations  thus  thrust  upon  us 
in  our  search  for  recruits  from  among  those  to 
whom  the  road  to  culture  has  been  open.  As 
for  the  youth  with  all  the  qualifications  but  no 
money,  he  must  be  willing  to  risk  financial 
instability,  and  he  must  make  his  choice  at  a 
time  when  new  tastes  burn  within  him  for 
gratification,  and  when  the  desire  for  marriage 
and  a  home  is  like  a  rosy  beacon  urging  him  on 
the   path   to   speedy    independence.     All   this 

64 


THE  PROFESSOR 


does  not  help  the  college  to  find  material  which 
at  the  best  is  rare.  Time  and  again  we  see  the 
men  we  want  reluctantly  turn  to  less  congenial 
or  less  hazardous  pursuits. 

But  I  would  not  insist  upon  this  point. 
Perhaps  by  the  operation  of  some  obscure 
choice  of  the  fittest,  we  draw,  if  not  the  best,  at 
least  the  most  worthy  into  the  academic  fold. 
Much  more  serious  is  the  inherited  attitude 
of  the  undergraduate.  I  say  inherited,  because 
it  is  not  his  own,  as  is  proved  by  the  fact  that 
he  loses  much  of  it  as  his  college  experience 
progresses.  It  is  a  belief  impressed  upon  his 
subconsciousness  by  his  earlier  environment, 
that  the  things  of  the  mind  are  unsympathetic, 
are  ornaments  merely,  are  non-essentials.  When 
his  parents  feel  that  the  professor  and  the  life 
of  the  professor  and  the  thoughts  of  the  pro- 
fessor are  alien,  or  that  a  college  degree  is  like 
the  cut  of  a  coat,  useful  not  in  itself,  but  only 
in  its  effect  upon  others,  the  circumstance 
is  not  hid  from  him.  And  this  prejudice 
against  knowledge  is  a  barrier  which  the  teacher 
must  try,  and  often  try  vainly,  to  overcome 
before  he  can  begin  to  teach. 

The   bell   strikes   the   hour.     The   class   as- 

65 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

sembles.  Here  is  a  group  of  fresh  minds  in 
fresh  bodies,  minds  half-trained  or  ill-trained, 
unstored  or  ill-stored.  It  is  the  professor's 
business  to  train  them,  to  store  them;  and  he, 
if  he  has  acquired  any  wisdom  in  his  search 
for  knowledge,  is  aware  of  how  little  he  himself 
really  knows,  is  still  more  aware  of  the  excessive 
difficulty  of  choosing  from  that  little  what  can 
be  taught,  what  is  worth  teaching  to  these  men, 
at  this  time,  in  their  mood.  And  he  is  still 
more  keenly  alive  to  the  difficulties  of  trans- 
mission. He  knows  that  he  must  tune  and 
retune  constantly  the  waves  of  energy  which 
pass  from  his  mind  to  the  class,  for  otherwise 
those  sensitive  but  slowly  adjusting  receivers 
will  catch  no  message.  Outside  the  class-room 
there  arc  ever-present  wars  and  rumors  of  wars 
over  educational  policies,  systems,  changing 
categories  of  knowledge  to  fit  changing  con- 
ditions, opinions  as  to  what  to  teach  as  diflFerent 
as  if  one  doctor  should  say,  "Give  the  patient 
digitalis,"  and  another,  "Fill  him  with  bro- 
mides." He  must  follow  the  course  of  these 
battles,  take  his  side,  urge  his  own  opinions, 
and  suffer  or  gain  by  them.  But  at  the  same 
time  he  knows  that  these  are  but  diplomatic 

66 


THE  PROFESSOR 


skirmishings,  after  all;  that  the  real  contest 
is  in  the  class-room;  that  how  much  is  taught 
is  even  more  important  than  what  is  taught. 
He  must  decide  upon  what  is  worth  teaching; 
he  must  also  do  that  equally  dijQScult  and  far 
more  important  thing,  teach.  Every  barrier 
in  the  road,  every  brake  upon  his  progress,  is  a 
hindrance  to  American  education;  and,  next 
to  his  own  shortcomings,  the  greatest  of 
obstacles  is  the  indifference  to  the  means  of 
education  in  careless,  commercial  America. 
Our  city  governments  are  illuminating  examples 
of  the  results  of  such  an  attitude.  Our  colleges 
are  instances  of  how  much  can  be  accomplished 
by  devotion  and  enthusiasm  in  the  face  of  it. 
I  am  only  too  well  aware  that  the  current 
American  belief  that  the  professor  is  unsym- 
pathetic and  often  merely  ornamental  is  some- 
times justified  by  the  facts.  Some  of  us  are 
pedantic  and  pragmatical.  Some  of  us  are 
indifferent  to  the  course  of  events  outside  the 
gates,  and  too  sure  that  since  the  heart  of  the 
world  is  unchanging,  its  brain  is  a  constant  also. 
Many  of  us  are  selfish  in  our  pursuit  of  narrow 
research  or  flattering  popularity;  many  are 
petty-minded  and  live  upon  intrigue  as  poli- 

67 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

ticians  upon  graft;  many  of  us  merely  talk  when 
we  should  be  teaching.  Most  of  us,  indeed, 
have  made  our  choice  from  among  the  teacher's 
seven  deadly  sins:  contempt,  arrogance,  vanity, 
subservience,  meanness,  self-absorption,  laziness 
— of  which  the  greatest  is  contempt  of  the  world, 
and  the  least  popular,  laziness.  But  almost 
to  a  man  we  are  loyal  to  our  profession,  and 
we  wish  not  fewer  hours  or  more  distinction 
or  even  more  money  (except  as  working  capital), 
but  a  more  active  interest  in  our  eflforts,  and  a 
demand,  which  is  at  the  same  time  more  rigorous 
and  more  intelligent,  for  results.  Ask  and  it 
shall  be  given  unto  you;  not  completely,  for 
education  as  a  science  is  still  uncertain,  and  as 
an  art  will  always  remain  difficult;  but  more 
abundantly  than  now.  We  are  trying  to  teach 
a  man  how  to  live  while  being  successful  in 
business.  We  are  trying  to  train  men  to  find 
out  what  is  really  useful  in  life.  Criticize, 
blame,  opp)ose  the  process,  and  make  your 
demands  as  exacting  as  you  will,  but  do  not 
be  indifferent  to  it.  IndiflFerence  is  education's 
primal  curse. 

I  knew  a  college  professor  who  but  recently 
completed  a  long  life  of  work.     In  his  youth  he 

08 


THE  PROFESSOR 


fought  through  the  Civil  War,  and  then  turned 
his  energies  into  the  no  less  strenuous  battle 
for  American  scholarship.  To  be  near  him  was 
to  be  charged  with  electricity,  so  that  the  stu- 
dents who  came  under  his  influence  gained  a 
new  consciousness  of  the  value  of  wide  and 
accurate  knowledge.  And  even  the  hopeless 
Philistines,  whose  ideals  were  those  of  the  mar- 
ket-place, learned  to  speak  with  respect  at 
least  of  the  shining  ones  of  the  intellectual  life, 
as  the  awed  barbarians  learned  to  reverence 
the  beautiful  gods  of  Greece.  When  he  found 
that  his  teaching  ceased  to  vary  with  the  vary- 
ing needs  of  his  class,  he  left  the  class-room, 
and  untiringly  began  to  pour  out  from  the 
storehouse  of  his  mind  the  accumulations  of  his 
long  career,  vigorous,  interested,  effective  as 
when  he  began.  If  the  academic  profession  can 
attract  and  hold  and  give  opportunity  to  such 
men  as  the  late  Thomas  Raynesford  Lounsbury, 
it  need  not  ask  for  condolence;  rather  the  pro- 
fessor may  say  like  Hotspur  in  "Henry  IV.": 

"Nay,  task  me  to  my  word;  approve  me, 
lord." 

But  the  professor  is  human.  If  America 
regards  him  as  ornamental,  he  may  turn  lazy 

69 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

on  her  hands  and  snuggle  down  into  a  Hfe  which, 
with  all  its  limitations,  is  for  men  of  taste  and 
culture  the  most  delightful  in  the  world.  If 
America  dampens  his  enthusiasm,  if  he  is  asked 
to  be  merely  a  cultivated  and  ineffective  gentle- 
man, it  is  the  community  and  not  the  professor 
who  will  suffer  most  from  such  a  policy;  it 
is  the  community  who  will  pay  most  heavily 
for  the  mistake. 


THE  LUXURY  OF  BEING 
EDUCATED 

I  TRAVELED  for  a  long  day  last  year  across 
the  Kansas  prairies  with  a  very  typical 
group  of  graduates  from  American  colleges. 
They  were  from  the  East,  the  Middle  West, 
and  the  Far  West,  brought  together  merely 
by  the  exigency  of  the  moment,  like  a  Freshman 
class  in  college.  The  journey  was  quiet;  we 
sat  in  the  club-car  at  our  ease,  and  conversa- 
tion was  general.  I  was  struck  by  the  narrow 
range  of  this  conversation.  Whether  it  flowed 
freely  among  a  group  at  the  observation  end 
of  the  car,  or  became  more  intimate  when  chairs 
were  drawn  together  by  the  buffet,  a  few  topics 
— ^business  conditions,  real  estate,  anecdotes, 
and  reminiscences — seemed  to  bound  it.  In- 
terest did  not  go  further.  The  men  themselves 
were  far  from  uninteresting.  From  the  Oregon 
apple-grower  to  the  New  York  broker,  every 

71 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

one  was  a  factor  somehow  or  somewhere  in 
American  life.  They  were  not  uninteresting; 
but  they  were  uninterested,  except  in  their 
narrow  ranges.  The  broker's  interest  in  apple 
culture  went  no  further  than  its  financial 
aspects;  the  apple-grower*s  interest  in  Wall 
Street  was  romantic  merely;  both  yawned 
when  I  talked  of  the  Russian  story  I  was  reading, 
or  tried  to  follow  through  the  window  the  route 
of  the  Santa  Fe  trail.  There  was  nothing 
novel  in  this  experience;  but  it  was  illuminating. 
It  seemed  to  me  that  these  men  had  failed  to 
get  their  money's  worth  of  education. 

It  is  very  curious  that  so  few  care,  or  dare, 
to  get  their  money's  worth  from  the  American 
college.  The  poor  man  gets  the  best  returns. 
He  must  ask  the  college  first  of  all  to  make  his 
boy  self-supporting — more  efficient,  if  p>ossible, 
than  his  father;  and  he  gets,  as  a  rule,  what  he 
pays  for.  But  the  p)oor  man  is  not  the  typical 
college  parent.  The  typical  parent  of  our 
undergraduates  has  stored  up  more  or  less 
capital;  he  has  a  position  waiting  for  his  son; 
his  boy  will  be  able  to  live  comfortably,  no 
matter  what  may  be  the  efficiency  of  his  mind. 
The  ability  to  support  himself,  the  power  to 

72 


THE  LUXURY  OF  BEING  EDUCATED 

make  money,  is  certainly  not  the  most  important 
quality  for  this  boy  to  possess.  Very  com- 
monly, especially  in  the  endowed  institutions 
of  the  East,  money-making  in  his  family  has 
reached  the  saturation  point.  It  is  unnecessary, 
it  may  be  inadvisable,  or  even  wrong,  for  him 
to  enter  gainful  pursuits.  What  the  son  of 
parents  in  comfortable  circumstances  requires 
is  not  so  much  a  narrow  training  in  the  support 
of  life  as  a  broader  one  in  how  to  utilize  living. 
His  interests,  quite  as  much  as  his  mental 
powers,  need  stimulus,  development,  and  dis- 
cipline. 

I  know  that  in  stating  the  situation  so  flatly 
I  run  head  on  into  an  American  tradition — 
or  prejudice.  The  American  democracy — even 
when  in  no  other  way  democratic — believes 
that  the  American  boy,  though  millions  may 
hang  over  his  head,  must  work  for  his  living, 
must  make  money.  With  a  righteous  fear 
lest  his  moral  fiber  degenerate  in  useless  studies, 
the  well-to-do  father  grudgingly  allows  his  son 
to  enter  college,  reminds  him  constantly  that 
the  nonsense  will  be  knocked  out  of  him  as 
soon  as  he  graduates,  and  hurries  him  into 
business  as  quickly  as  possible,  breathing  relief 

73 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

when  he  is  safe  in  an  atmosphere  where  labor 
is  measured  by  returns  in  cash.  If  there  were 
danger  of  starvation  ahead  he  could  not  be 
more  anxious  to  fix  his  son's  mind  on  the  duty 
of  earning  ten  dollars  a  week.  I  do  not  won- 
der at  the  fathers — even  in  the  instances  to 
which  I  limit  myself,  the  well-to-do  parents 
of  intellectually  able  sons.  They  are  apply- 
ing the  American  tradition  as  it  was  applied 
to  them.  But  what  is  the  effect  on  the  boys? 
Sometimes  it  is  good;  often  it  is  unfortunate; 
occasionally  it  is  disastrous.  A  Junior  comes 
into  my  office  for  a  talk.  He  is  clear-eyed  and 
intelligent,  but  conventional  from  his  clothes 
to  his  conversation.  His  father  controls  an 
enormous  business,  and  he  is  to  begin  at  the 
bottom  of  the  corporation  as  soon  as  he  grad- 
uates. I  gasp  at  the  figures  of  output  and 
return  that  he  casually  mentions.  I  wonder 
just  how  he  will  regard  the  responsibility  which 
the  course  of  events  will  certainly  bring.  The 
prospect  does  not  worry  him  in  the  least.  He 
has  inherited  shrewdness  and  self-confidence. 
He'll  "do  as  dad  did."  But  of  interest  in  the 
problems  and  the  possibilities  involved  in  this 
vast  ownership  I  discover  not  a  particle,  and 

74 


THE  LUXURY  OF  BEING  EDUCATED 

little  more  in  what  his  means  will  enable  him 
to  do  with  his  life.  A  fast  motor,  a  country 
club,  a  good  boat,  a  yearly  trip  to  Paris — 
his  ambitions  go  no  further.  Among  his  col- 
lege courses,  English  composition  interests  him 
because  "dad"  says  he'll  have  to  write  good 
business  letters;  economics  a  little  because  it 
deals  with  cash;  English  literature  in  a  barely 
discoverable  degree  because  of  the  useful 
culture  which  is  supposed  to  flow  from  it.  All 
the  rest  of  the  world  of  knowledge — historical, 
scientific,  esthetic — is  a  dull  blank.  It  does 
not  interest  him  now;  it  will  never  interest 
him. 

It  is  not  to  be  expected  that  the  college  can 
ever  make  an  intellectual  of  such  a  youth; 
nor  should  it  try  to  do  so.  But  if  we  could 
have  interested  him  in  ideas;  if  we  could  have 
extended  and  lifted  the  range  of  his  pleasures; 
widened  and  deepened  his  conceptions  of 
commerce;  given  him  a  "social  conscience" — 
we  would  have  accomplished  something.  It  is 
not  to  the  credit  of  the  college  that  the  time- 
spirit  in  this  youth  was  too  strong  for  its  in- 
fluence to  combat;  but  the  blame  does  not 
rest  entirely  upon  the  faculty.     "Dad"  must 

75 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

share  the  responsibility.  He  sent  the  boy  to 
us  with  eyes  closed  to  everything  but  money- 
making  and  fun.  Perh^s  this  youngster  will 
put  all  his  energies  into  doubling  the  family 
fortune;  more  probably  he  will  discover  the 
weakness  in  the  American  tradition  of  work, 
break  through  it,  and  enjoy  himself  according 
to  his  lights.  Of  these  undesirable  alter- 
natives, the  second  is  at  least  the  more  human 
and  i)erhaps  the  more  rational. 

But  the  youth  whose  plight  arouses  my 
sympathy  and  indignation  is  of  a  different 
type.  His  kind  is  not  so  abundant  in  the  col- 
leges, but  its  numbers  are  increasing  yearly. 
He  best  represents,  I  think,  the  new  genera- 
tion of  educated  Americans. 

I  knew  him  first  in  Freshman  year:  a 
pleasant  boy,  well-mannered,  with  the  air  of 
one  who  had  lived  in  a  cultivated  home.  He 
was  not  an  "honor  man";  he  seemed  afraid 
to  throw  himself  into  his  work.  And  yet  hia 
finer  accent,  his  occasional  interest  in  music, 
art,  and  books,  made  his  classmates  a  little 
shy  of  him.  He  was  said  to  be,  possibly,  a 
"high-brow,"  or  a  "freak."  But  he  was  a 
good  athlete  in  a  small  way,  and  a  "good  mixer." 

76 


THE  LUXURY  OF  BEING  EDUCATED 

As  soon  as  he  learned  the  conventional 
fashion  in  dressing,  and  acquired  the  proper 
slang — which  the  boys  from  the  big  "prep, 
schools"  had  from  the  beginning — he  got  on 
very  well.  He  "made  a  society,'*  was  on  the 
track  team,  wrote  for  the  papers;  bade  fair  to 
have  an  exemplary  college  career,  and  to  be- 
come one  of  the  fine  fellows  who  merge  in- 
distinguishably  into  a  common  type  and  de- 
part as  one  man  from  college. 

However,  in  Junior  year  came  a  reaction. 
I  have  seen  it  hundreds  of  times — a  faint  dawn 
of  intellectual  awakening;  a  sudden  interest 
in  the  world  as  distinguished  from  college  life. 
The  mind  grips  upon  knowledge  and  moves 
slowly  with  it,  as  the  wheels  move  when  the 
gears  of  an  automobile  engine  slide  into  first 
speed.  He  was  roused  to  an  enthusiasm  of 
thinking  by  a  stimulating  book.  Ideas  that 
he  did  not  fancy  began  to  anger  him — a  sure 
sign  of  intellectual  progress.  He  began  to 
ask  intelligent  questions.  Then  he  fell  into 
a  depression  over  his  ignorance.  He  began  to 
criticize  the  curriculum.  Men  talked  in  his 
room  till  late  at  night.  He  bought  special 
cigarettes  and  posed  for  a  little  while  as  an 

77 


COLIyEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

esthete.  But  when  he  devoted  a  month  of  a 
summer  vacation  to  reading  up  on  rehgion, 
and  came  to  a  conclusion  (so  it  seemed  to  me) 
as  original  as  it  was  wrong,  I  felt  sure  that  we 
were  dealing  with  a  mind. 

This  youth  came  from  a  family  in  which 
cultivation  and  reasonable  wealth  had  been 
hereditary  for  several  generations.  There  was 
no  pressing  need  for  him  in  the  family  business, 
no  reason  why  he  should  not  be  educated  to  the 
full;  in  fact,  his  parents  prided  themselves 
on  the  education  that  they  were  giving  their 
son.  And  yet,  when  Senior  year  came,  and  his 
desire  for  knowledge  awakened  with  the  ai>- 
proach  of  the  end  of  the  conventional  period 
of  training,  clouds  appeared  on  the  domestic 
horizon.  I  gathered  that  he  was  not  sufficiently 
anxious  to  enter  business;  that  he  did  not 
know  what  he  wished  to  do;  that  college  seemed 
to  be  making  him  unpractical.  I  was  con- 
sulted as  a  friend,  first  by  him,  then  by  his 
mother.  I  told  his  anxious  mother  that  her 
boy  needed  to  learn  more,  to  think  more,  before 
putting  his  knowledge  and  his  desires  to  the 
test  of  practice;  that,  if  their  means  per- 
mitted it,  nothing  would  be  so  good  for  him  as 

78 


THE  LUXURY  OF  BEING  EDUCATED 

a  little  more  education.     She  thanked   me — 

and    sought    a    more    practical    adviser,    who 

suggested  that  the  youth  be  put  into  the  bond 

business  so  that  he  should  waste  no  time  while 

making  up  his  mind  as  to  his  future  profession! 

If  he  had  wished  to  be  a  lawyer,  or  a  doctor,  or 

an   engineer,    they    would   gladly    have   given 

him  the  extra  years  of  preparation.     But  he 

merely  wished  to  think  and  to  know:  to  study 

more  economics,  more  history;  to  read  widely; 

to  carry  through  some  guided  work  in  social 

service,  until  he  could  shape  his  philosophy  of 

life,  control  his   mind,  and  find  out  what  he 

wished    to    do    with    his    powers.     And    this, 

coming  in  no  recognized  category  of  youthful 

endeavor,  was  unpractical,  aimless,  or  leading 

perhaps  to  idleness  and  eccentricity.     He  must 

get  to  work! 

They  chose  wisely,  according  to  their  lights. 

I  think  that  this  youth  would  have  responded 

to  the  intellectual  stimulus  which  the  university 

could  have  given  him.     I  think  that  he  might 

have  been  led  into  study  for  its  own  sake,  into 

research,  perhaps  into  teaching.  Having  means, 

he  would  have  been  able  to  follow  his  bent 

wherever  it  led  him,  and  taste  of  the  delights 
6  79 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

and  the  rigors  of  academic  life,  without  its 
meannesses  and  its  sordid  cares.  He  would 
have  cut  loose  from  business  for  ever,  and 
perhaps  distinguished  himself.  But  distinc- 
tion of  that  kind  did  not  interest  his  family. 
They  have  made  a  mediocre  business  man  of 
him;  and  if  that  is  what  they  wanted,  they 
have  moved  sagaciously.  Nevertheless,  I  do 
not  believe  in  their  lights. 

I  am  far  from  urging  that  all  thoughtful, 
intellectually  hungry  boys  should  be  drawn 
into  the  academic  life.  Hundreds  of  youngsters 
like  the  one  I  have  described  would  have  carried 
the  profits  of  a  fuller  education  into  business 
and  the  professions.  As  business  men,  they 
would  have  gained  in  mental  power,  but  most 
of  all  in  a  sense  of  proportion  and  a  better 
understanding  of  the  aims,  the  advantages, 
and  the  possibilities  of  the  life  they  were 
choosing.  As  lawyers  or  doctors  or  engineers, 
their  eflSciency  surely  would  not  have  suffered 
from  a  broader  outlook  upon  other  aspects  of 
the  world's  interests  and  the  world's  work,  and 
their  lives  would  have  gained  much.  That 
this  fuller  education,  with  the  keener  interest 
in  life  which  comes  with  it,  would  have  been  a 

80 


THE  LUXURY  OF  BEING  EDUCATED 

luxury  for  such  men,  I  readily  grant.  But  this 
is  the  age  of  luxuries.  The  same  parent  who 
balks  at  an  extra  year  of  education  lavishes 
automobiles,  large  incomes,  and  less  desirable 
favors  upon  his  children.  Most  fathers  who 
send  their  sons  to  college  regard  luxuries  as  a 
right — if  not  automobiles,  riding-horses,  good 
pictures,  and  yachts,  at  least  warm  houses, 
electricity,  travel,  and  far  more  expensive  food 
than  is  needed  for  sustenance.  Granted  that 
an  education  beyond  the  requirements  for  self- 
support,  but  well  within  the  demands  of  an  ac- 
tive, pleasurable,  intelligent  life,  is  a  luxury,  are 
there  not  many  Americans  who  can  afford  it.^^ 

I  am  assured  that  the  best  thinkers  in  the 
educational  world  are  spending  their  energies 
not  in  lengthening,  but  in  shortening,  the 
period  of  education;  in  cutting  down  waste, 
in  increasing  efficiency.  I  can  reply  that  such 
work  is  invaluable.  Let  us  improve,  condense, 
reform,  wherever  we  can,  making  four-year 
courses  into  three,  if  they  teach  only  three 
years'  worth,  concentrating  and  improving 
the  work  in  our  schools  until  they  turn  out 
boys  of  sixteen  as  well  educated  as  French  or 
German   students   of  the  same  age.     Let   us 

81 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

save  what  time  we  can,  so  that  the  youth  who 
can  afford  no  more  education  than  that  pro- 
vided by  the  usual  college  course  may  get  it 
more  speedily  or  more  eflSciently.  But  it  is  not 
a  question  here  of  providing  the  best  educa- 
tion in  the  least  time  for  those  who  must  hurl 
themselves  into  the  economic  struggle.  It  is 
a  question  of  providing  the  best  education, 
regardless  of  time,  for  the  boy  whose  struggle 
will  be  not  so  much  to  support  life  as  to  use  it 
properly.  If  such  an  education  is  a  luxury — 
and  when  I  think  of  the  pre-eminent  need  of 
the  times  for  more  intelligence,  I  begin  to  doubt 
my  term — then  it  would  be  easy  to  present 
statistics  from  our  colleges  which  would  flatly 
contradict  the  platitude  that  in  all  things 
America  is  luxurious. 

If  the  parent  with  a  comfortable  living  or  a 
good  position  to  give  his  boy  would  put  less 
emphasis  on  the  rigors  of  tlie  coming  financial 
struggle,  and  more  upon  the  advantages  of  a 
well-opened  mind,  the  effect  upon  the  college 
would  be  tremendous.  The  undergraduate 
would  feel  it  first  of  all.  Upon  many,  the  in- 
fluence, it  is  true,  would  be  only  indirect. 
Out  of  a  college  class  of,  say,  three  hundred, 

82 


THE  LUXURY  OF  BEING  EDUCATED 

perhaps  fifty  are  merely  well-dressed,  agreeable 
young  animals,  whose  minds  have  already 
attained  their  maximum  of  breadth.  It  is  a 
fair  question  whether  they  are  not  already 
spending  too  much  time  in  education.  Per- 
haps one  hundred  and  fifty  belong  to  the  great 
average — which  is,  after  all,  made  up  of  too 
many  varieties  to  be  called  an  average.  Dull 
men,  who  work,  nevertheless,  with  faithfulness; 
bright  men,  lazy  by  nature;  busy  men,  far  too 
much  concerned  now  with  social  or  commercial 
success  to  spend  much  more  energy  in  thinking — 
all  these  would  feel  that  the  world  outside  was 
beginning  to  value  culture  and  the  intellect, 
and,  without  radically  changing  their  hab.its 
or  their  aims,  would  nevertheless  manage  to  get 
what  they  felt  to  be  their  share  of  mental  broad- 
ening. But  it  is  of  the  remaining  one  hundred 
that  I  write:  the  men  who  are  not  content  to 
take  at  second  hand,  or  do  without,  the  illumina- 
tion of  the  last  century  of  science,  or  the  accu- 
mulated knowledge  and  inspiration  of  the 
earlier  world;  the  men  whose  minds  are  open- 
ing and  are  worth  opening.  Many  of  them 
are  eager  for  active  life,  and  will  not  wait  for 
more  education;    many  of  them  are  poor  and 

83 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

cannot  wait;  but  many  more  would  choose 
the  luxury  of  a  deeper  preparation  if  anxious 
parents,  moved  by  a  short-sighted  pubHc 
opinion,  did  not  force  them,  still  immature, 
into  the  world.  They  may  know  the  text, 
"Man  shall  not  live  by  bread  alone";  but  in 
the  face  of  practical  adults  asserting  the  con- 
trary, and  urging  them  to  come  out  and  earn 
their  living,  they  are  not  likely  to  apply  it. 
For  it  takes  a  clearer  sight,  a  stronger  will,  and 
more  independence  than  even  the  exceptional 
boy  is  likely  to  possess,  to  see  that  education 
in  some  instances  may  be  the  first  and  most 
important  profession. 

The  effect  upon  the  professor  of  a  more  gen- 
erous parental  attitude  toward  education  would 
be  as  great  as  upon  the  undergraduate,  and  more 
calculable.  The  college,  as  distinguished  from 
the  technical  school,  has  always  proposed,  as 
its  ideal,  to  educate  for  living — and  this  term 
includes  both  earning  one*s  living  and  enjoying 
it.  The  difficulty  now  is  that  the  faculty,  the 
parent,  and  the  undergraduate  each  grasp  their 
interpretation  of  this  broad  purpose  and  pull 
as  hard  as  they  can  in  different  directions. 

The  faculty,  on  the  whole,  lean  too  far 
H 


THE  LUXURY  OF  BEING  EDUCATED 

toward  the  idealistic  side  of  this  education. 
The  extremists  among  them  maintain  that  in 
college  a  boy  should  study  nothing  practical, 
nothing  with  potentialities  of  money-making. 
But  education  is  surely  broader  than  they 
think.  It  is  a  poor  education  which  in  teaching 
a  comprehension  of  living  does  not  help  toward 
earning  the  daily  bread.  In  truth,  it  is,  and 
I  suppose  it  always  will  be,  a  fault  of  our  pro- 
fession that  we  turn  away  from  the  utilitarian 
aspects  of  our  subjects,  and  are  more  interested 
in  their  cultural  than  in  their  commercial  value. 
Our  lack  of  experience  in  turning  thought 
into  dollars  makes  us  unduly  depreciate  what 
might  be  called  the  business  end  of  a  liberal 
education. 

But  where  this  error  exists  we  have  been 
driven  into  it  by  the  obstinacy  of  parents,  who 
will  not  see  that  the  power  to  make  money  is 
only  a  by-product  of  education — by  well-to-do 
parents  especially,  who  send  us  youngsters 
who  will  have  to  assume  vast  responsibilities 
and  use  vast  opportunities  for  service  and 
pleasure,  saying.  Teach  my  youthful  mill- 
ionaire how  to  make  more  money!     We  have 

had  to  fight  an  ingrained  American  prejudice; 

85 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE   FATHERS 

no  wonder  that  we  have  become  a  Httle  prej- 
udiced ourselves  in  the  course  of  the  struggle. 

For  all  these  reasons,  the  reactive  effect  of 
even  a  portion  of  a  class  sent  to  college  in 
sympathy  with  the  ideals  of  the  college  profess- 
or— which  are,  after  all,  those  of  a  true  liberal 
education — would  be  very  great.  We  would 
not  turn  out  geniuses,  or  make  over  America; 
but  that  deathly  indifference,  sprung  of  con- 
flicting aims,  which  hangs  like  a  fog-bank  over 
the  American  college,  would  lift  and  hghten. 
The  inefficiency  which  is  to  be  found  in  teach- 
ing as  well  as  in  business,  and  the  inherent 
laziness  of  the  human  animal,  would  prevent  a 
too  rapid  clearing  of  the  atmosphere.  We 
would  not  be  blinded  by  the  flash.  But  I 
think  that  professor  and  father  and  son  might 
begin  to  work  together  toward  a  common 
purpose;  and  that  the  teacher  would  teach  more 
broadly  and  more  successfully  the  things  which 
knowledge  can  contribute  to  life. 

But  if  education  should  be  numbered  among 

the  jjermitted  luxuries  of  American  life,  the 

greatest  effect  would  be  on  a  department  of 

the  university  that  means  little  now  to  the 

undergraduate    and    less    than    little    to    the 

8a 


THE  LUXURY  OF  BEING  EDUCATED 

American  parent.  I  mean  the  graduate  school, 
the  business  of  which  is  to  give  advanced  train- 
ing in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge.  The  well- 
to-do  parent  is  not  especially  interested  in  the 
productive  activities  of  the  graduate  school, 
and  I  do  not  see  why  he  should  be.  He  thinks 
of  it,  if  he  thinks  of  it  at  all,  as  a  highly  special- 
ized laboratory  for  turning  out  unreadable 
treatises  on  the  sources  of  unreadable  plays; 
or  accounts  of  ridiculously  named  chemical 
compounds;  or  pamphlets  on  Sanscrit  inflec- 
tions; or  philosophical  theories  whose  very 
titles  he  does  not  understand.  It  is  absurd 
to  maintain  that  he  should  be  vitally  interested 
because  these  represent  the  outposts  of  knowl- 
edge. No  one  blames  him  for  a  lack  of  in- 
terest in  the  valves  of  a  steam-turbine,  in  how 
to  modify  milk  for  a  ten  months'  baby,  in  the 
manufacture  of  breakfast  foods.  These  things 
also  are  important.  He  cannot  afford  to  despise 
them  because  they  lie  beyond  his  metier;  but 
enthusiasm  is  not  demanded  of  him. 

In  another  phase  of  the  graduate  school, 
however,  he  might  well  be  more  interested. 
I  mean  in  the  opportunities  it  offers,  or  could 
offer,  to  his  boy.     We  have  heard  much  of 

87 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

what  the  graduate  schools  can  do  for  the 
country.  I  am  more  concerned  just  now  with 
what  they  might  do  for  the  undergraduate 
who  is  to  be  allowed  the  luxury  of  a  little  more 
education. 

My  own  experience  was  typical  only  in  so 
far  as  my  condition  resembled  that  of  hundreds 
of  boys  who  come  to  Senior  year  in  college 
with  a  distressing  vagueness  of  aims,  a  feeling 
of  incapacity,  and  one  certainty — that  they 
are  not  yet  educated,  that  they  are  not  yet 
ready  to  enter  the  world.  As  it  happened,  I 
was  allowed  to  choose  the  path  of  the  graduate 
school. 

I  entered  uncertain,  doubtful  of  what  in- 
terested me,  guiltily  conscious  that  I  ought 
to  be  earning  ten  dollars  a  week  in  an  office  or  a 
mill.  I  found  myself  in  a  new  atmosphere. 
We  were  starting  over  again;  we  were  boasting 
of  our  ignorance;  we  were  clamoring  for 
knowledge;  yearning  for  opportunities  to  study 
in  a  field  which  grew  wider  and  wider  under  our 
touch.  Far  from  separating  ourselves  from 
life,  we  seemed  to  grow  for  the  first  time  acutely 
conscious  of  it.  Reality,  instead  of  being  a 
simple  affair  of  making  money,  marrying,  and 

88 


THE  LUXURY  OF  BEING  EDUCATED 

dying,  began  to  grow  vast,  complex,  and  infi- 
nitely interesting.  It  was  with  diflficulty  that 
we  held  ourselves  to  the  little  segment  which 
was  assigned  to  us  for  study.  Our  thoughts 
leaped  ahead — though  still  vaguely — to  the 
practical,  concrete  work  we  must  do,  and  we 
were  distressed  at  the  opportunities  for  knowl- 
edge that  must  be  left  behind  us.  Ennui  be- 
came unthinkable;  idleness  a  crime.  Yet  we 
were  boys  still,  and  intensely  human  boys. 
We  sat  late  with  beer  and  pipes,  and  talked 
nonsense  far  more  effectively  than  in  under- 
graduate days;  we  took  up  athletics,  which  in 
college  we  had  left  to  the  teams;  we  were 
even  merrier  because  our  mirth  came  as  a 
reaction  from  hard  work.  When  we  compared 
experiences  with  the  intellectually  sympathetic 
among  our  classmates  who  had  gone  out  into 
the  world,  we  found  that  they,  too,  had  felt 
the  spring  and  the  stimulus  of  directed,  pur- 
poseful endeavor.  But  except  where  they 
had  already  discovered  a  career,  their  enthu- 
siasm was  less  than  ours,  their  energies  not  so 
active;  they  did  not  seem  to  be  on  such  good 
terms  with  life. 

Of  course,  in  a  way,  we  were  specialists,  and 

89 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

this  seems  to  remove  my  personal  exf)erience 
from  the  argument  I  am  advancing  for  the 
luxury  of  a  full  education.  In  reality,  I  think, 
it  does  not.  For  we  were  specialists  only  by 
compulsion,  because,  since  most  of  us  were 
preparing  for  teaching  or  scholarship,  we  knew 
that  we  must  confine  most  of  our  labors  to  one 
field.  And  I  think  that  it  was,  and  is,  one 
of  the  defects  of  the  graduate  school  that  it 
drives  too  quickly  into  the  more  highly  spe- 
cialized branches  of  knowledge;  that  it  puts 
all  the  emphasis  upon  preparation  for  scholarly 
production,  just  as  the  world  outside  puts 
all  the  emphasis  upon  money-making. 

In  fact,  the  graduate  school  looked  with  a 
hardly  concealed  contempt  upon  the  candidates 
for  a  simple  M.A.  degree  who  would  not  go 
to  the  bitter  end  of  any  one  line  of  endeavor, 
who  were  seeking  merely  a  further  preparation 
for  life.  And  that  was  its  weakness.  There  it 
shared  —  though  the  accusation  would  have 
angered  its  professors — the  American  prejudice 
against  the  luxury  of  a  general  education.  In 
all  that  seething  intellectual  life,  with  its 
burning  interests  and  increasing  powers,  many 
of  them  saw  no  health  except  in  the  student 

90 


THE  LUXURY  OF  BEING  EDUCATED 

dedicated  to  research.  Those  who  left  us  by 
the  way — for  the  law,  for  business,  for  diplo- 
macy, or  for  literature — they  regarded  as  strayed 
sheep. 

No  one  who  knows  the  results  would  be  so 
blind  as  to  attack  the  value  of  that  specializa- 
tion in  research  which  has  already  placed  our 
graduate  schools  beside  those  of  Germany  and 
France.  But  why  have  we  failed  to  realize 
that  in  the  means  they  offer  for  fulfilling  a 
general  education  they  can  satisfy  a  real  need 
of  contemporary  America?  The  life  we  tasted 
there  would  be  better  for  many  a  thoughtful, 
hesitating  Senior  I  have  known  since  than  a 
half-hearted  plunge  into  a  world  which  did 
not  yet  interest  him;  a  year  or  so  later  it  would 
have  sent  him,  eager  and  enthusiastic,  into 
an  activity  which  his  broadening  mind  could 
have  chosen  for  itself. 

It  is  easy  to  abuse  America  and  the  American 
parent  for  parsimony  in  education,  but  it  is 
not  very  satisfactory.  To  begin  with,  it  is 
futile  to  abuse  a  tendency,  and  the  American 
attitude  toward  liberal  education  is  a  tendency 
— and  an  inherited  tendency,  which  makes  it 
all  the  more  difficult  to  escape.     The  American 

91 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

parent  has,  as  a  rule,  but  recently  attained 
economic  independence  and  ended  his  up-hill 
climb.  His  sons  can  start  on  the  level;  they 
will  not  have  to  climb  as  he  climbed.  But 
climbing  is  what  he  best  understands;  and  he 
must  be  liberal-minded  and  a  little  prophetic 
in  his  vision  if  he  does  not  send  his  boys  to 
college  to  prepare  for  the  needs,  not  of  their 
generation,  but  his  own. 

It  is  easy  to  abuse  the  undergraduate  for 
not  striving  harder  for  the  kind  of  education 
that  will  make  him  most  happj'  and  most 
useful.  But  to  what  advantage?  The  patient 
is  not  to  blame  when  the  WTong  medicine,  or 
too  little  medicine,  is  prescribed  for  him!  And 
furthermore,  that  minority  of  our  undergrad- 
uates who  really  need  more  education  are  ask- 
ing for  it,  are  struggling  for  it,  though  often 
in  a  blind  and  half -conscious  fashion.  Every 
college  teacher  not  case-hardened  in  intellectual 
superiority  knows  and  is  rejoiced  by  this  fact. 

In  truth,  the  college  teacher  must  take  his 
share  of  responsibility  for  the  niggardliness  of 
American  education.  I  suppose  that  we  realize 
the  essential  importance  in  contemporary  life 
of  the  intelligence  which  comes  from  a  full  edu- 

02 


THE  LUXURY  OF  BEING  EDUCATED 

cation,  but  I  confess  that  I  think  we  do  not 
always  act  upon  our  realization.  I  find  myself 
constantly  resisting  the  temptation  to  say: 
"This,  gentlemen,  will  not  interest  you:  it 
leads  to  an  appreciation  of  life;  it' shows  how 
to  rise  to  the  possibilities  of  living;  but  it  will 
never  make  a  cent  for  you,  and  it  is  diflScult. 
You  must  study  it;  but  you  won't  be  inter- 
ested." I  hate  this  hierophantic,  better-than- 
thou  attitude  in  myself  or  any  other  teacher. 
What  right  have  we  to  assume  that  the  higher 
realms  of  the  intellect  are  reserved  for  the 
scholar  and  the  theorist?  What  right  to  smile 
superciliously  at  all  interest  in  knowledge 
that  does  not  lead  directly  toward  scholarly 
production?  What  is  gained  by  asserting  that 
study  must  be  bleak  and  austere;  that  learning 
must  be  unworldly  and  exclusive?  The  col- 
leges also  have  been  indisposed  to  allow  the 
competent — who  do  not  wish  to  become  spe- 
cialists— the  luxury  of  a  full  education. 

Conclusions  will  quickly  be  reached  by  those 
who  take  the  trouble  to  look  about  them. 
We  are  not  so  rooted  in  our  prejudice  against 
work  that  is  unmeasurable  by  cash  as  to  have 
produced  no  examples  of  those  who  are  profiting 

93 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

themselves  or  the  country  by  the  luxurious 
excess  of  their  education.  The  young  mill- 
ionaire who  is  using  his  wealth  eflSciently, 
enthusiastically,  wisely  for  social  service  and 
social  knowledge,  is  no  longer  so  rare  as  to  be 
unfamiliar,  though  he  is  still  a  curiosity.  He 
is  drawing  dividends  for  himself  and  others 
from  a  deeper  comprehension  of  the  needs  of 
society  than  experience  without  education 
could  have  given  him.  And  many  a  man  not  a 
millionaire,  though  master  of  his  income,  is 
using  his  business  or  his  profession  for  broad 
and  interesting  services  to  the  community, 
made  possible  by  the  knowledge  and  the  in- 
terests with  which  education  has  endowed 
him.  Less  valuable,  perhaps,  and  yet  in- 
valuable in  a  genuine  civilization,  is  another 
and  more  familier  type:  the  business  man  or 
lawyer  who  has  learned  how  to  live  outside 
his  office;  whose  pleasures  are  not  limited  to 
the  physical  and  the  sensual;  who  has  a  hinter- 
land, a  background,  as  H.  G.  Wells  puts  it; 
who  is  a  cultivated,  sympathetic,  intelligent, 
broad-minded  man  first,  and  a  good  business 
man  or  lawyer  afterward.  This,  too,  is  a 
product   of   education — an   almost   inevitable 

M 


THE  LUXURY  OF  BEING  EDUCATED 

result  of  a  full  and  true  education,  when  the 
mind  is  capable  of  receiving  and  profiting  by 
the  riches  of  knowledge  and  the  stimulus  of 
ideas. 

Observe,  on  the  other  hand,  the  sons  of 
parents  in  comfortable  circumstances,  the  boys 
who  were  guaranteed  a  fair  start  in  life  whenever 
and  however  they  entered  upon  practical  work, 
and  who  sought  only  the  utilitarian  in  college. 
Have  they  gained  by  their  loss  of  culture  and 
a  broad  education?  Are  they  more  useful  to 
the  community,  more  interesting  to  themselves; 
are  they  happier?  Those  who  left  us  when 
their  interests  were  just  awakening — have  they 
gained  by  the  year  or  so  of  time  they  have 
saved? 

Consider  those  familiar  figures  in  American 
life:  the  bored  youth  selling  bonds  "to  keep 
doing  something";  the  half-hearted  successor 
to  a  big  business  who  lets  his  subordinates 
carry  most  of  the  work;  the  wealthy  youngster 
who  conducts  a  gambling  business  on  the  stock- 
exchange  because  he  must  have  some  excite- 
ment; the  rich  idler  too  intelligent  to  find  the 
usual  means  of  time-killing  efficacious;  the 
heir  to  a  million  making  more  money  doggedly 

7,  95 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

because  he  doesn't  know  what  else  to  do. 
Some  of  these  misfittings,  no  doubt,  arise  from 
difficulties  of  temperament,  or  defects  in  char- 
acter; but  many  of  them  are  due  simply  and 
solely  to  insufficient  education.  These  men 
have  not  been  raised  intellectually  to  the  level 
of  their  opportunities.  Their  interests  are  still 
dormant.  Nothing  very  serious  is  the  matter 
with  them;  they  get  along  well  enough  accord- 
ing to  common  opinion.  More  education, 
whether  in  college  or  in  graduate  school,  was 
not  a  necessity;  it  was  a  luxury;  but  it  was  a 
luxury  they  could  well  have  aflforded. 


COLLEGE  LIFE  AND  COLLEGE 
EDUCATION 

SINCE  the  West  has  been  tamed,  Alaska 
been  made  into  a  political  question  merely, 
detectives  become  lecturers  or  magazine- writers, 
and  bandits  proved  to  be  only  mental  degen- 
erates, romance,  or  at  least  the  romantic  life, 
has  become  a  scarce  article  in  America.  This 
accounts,  probably,  for  the  revival  of  melo- 
drama and  the  success  of  the  photoplay.  The 
less  chance  for  a  living  romance,  the  keener 
our  appetite  for  an  artificial  variety.  And  this 
leads  me  to  wonder  why  so  little  advantage 
has  been  taken  upon  the  stage  and  in  books 
of  the  most  romantic  experience  still  available 
in  everyday  America — I  mean,  "college  life." 

I  asked  this  question  once  of  a  novelist, 
suggesting  the  care-free,  vigorous  experiences 
of  happy  college  living  as  a  subject  for  a  book 
that    would    crystallize    the    vivid    sensations 

07 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

of  the  most  intense  period  of  youth.  He 
repHed  that  Hfe  in  college  was  too  immature, 
too  superficial,  too  lacking  in  significance  for 
good  story -telling; — that  it  could  not  be  made 
precise  without  taking  too  seriously  what  were, 
after  all,  gambols  in  pasture  of  colts  not  yet 
familiar  with  the  road.  Perhaps  he  was  right. 
Certainly  the  excessive  rarity  of  books  or  plays 
that  present  "college  life"  without  caricature 
or  over  -  emphasis  goes  to  prove  his  point. 
Nevertheless,  even  though  its  romance  be 
ephemeral,  mere  dawn  shades  of  pink  that 
fade  in  the  light,  romance  it  is  of  the  right  rose 
quality — ^all  the  romance  that  many  an  Amer- 
ican will  ever  possess. 

It  is  a  little  sad  that  the  stem  idealist  feels 
it  his  duty  to  train  his  heavy  guns  upon  an 
experience  so  rich  in  charm  and  so  great  in  its 
rewards.  If  he  is  a  Jeremy  Collier,  execrating 
youth  because  it  is  youthful,  demanding  re- 
sponsibility where  irresponsibility  still  has  some 
value  and  much  delight,  I  sympathize  with  him 
as  little  as  with  the  respectable  resident  of  a 
college  town  who  grumbles  "ruffian"  when- 
ever some  one  shouts  "Fire!"  from  the  dor- 
mitories in  the  calm  of  an  April  night.    If  he 

98 


COLLEGE  LIFE  AND  COLLEGE  EDUCATION 

complains  that  "college  life,"  romance  and  all, 
has  set  itself  in  dangerous  opposition  to  the 
more  serious  business  of  a  college,  I  am  forced 
to  assent.  But  I  assent  reluctantly,  since 
this  opposition  seems  to  me  one  of  the  most 
depressing  and  unfortunate  circumstances  in 
the  history  of  the  American  college.  "College 
life"  and  college  education  ought  to  get  along 
well  together.  They  should  complement,  not 
contradict,  each  other;  for  their  services,  when 
rightly  understood,  are  curiously  alike. 

The  professor  (who  is  supposed  to  represent 
the  serious  side  of  college  education)  and  the 
undergraduate  mix  well  enough — outside  of 
the  class-room.  In  fact,  when  thrown  together 
in  circumstances  entirely  free  from  restraint — 
in  a  home,  or  a  club,  or  on  a  tramp  across  the 
hills — they  have  an  attraction  for  each  other 
much  stronger  than  that  which  draws  together 
the  outer  world  of  older  and  younger  men. 
As  an  instance,  my  steps  in  the  later  afternoon 
lead  me  past  two  clubs,  one  for  older  men  only, 
one  where  graduate  and  undergraduate  may 
meet  and  mix.  With  noteworthy  frequency  I 
find  myself  turning  in  at  the  club  of  mingled 
ages.     Is  it  because  I  like  to  talk  in  the  presence 

99 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

of  those  who,  on  account  of  their  accustomed 
deference  to  professorial  authority,  will  give 
my  words  weight?  I  have  charged  myself  with 
that  human  weakness,  and  answered  "not 
guilty."  Mortal  men  are  subject  to  such 
temptations;  but  in  this  case  there  is  a  better 
reason.    I  like  to  hear  them  talk. 

"For  we  were  nursed  upon  the  self -same 
hill."  The  life  they  live  was  my  life,  and  is 
still  a  part  of  it.  I  see  its  false  emphasis,  its 
misguided  energies,  but  let  any  one  attack  it 
and  I  rally  to  its  defense.  Nor  is  this  col- 
legiate loyalty  unreciprocated  by  the  under- 
graduate. 

And  this  is  as  it  should  be,  for  the  vivid 
experiences  and  fresh  interests  of  "college 
life"  are  part  of  the  educative  process  in  which 
the  professor  of  the  liberal  arts  is  engaged. 
The  boy  who  lives  a  keen,  full  life  in  college — 
and  where  can  you  live  more  intensely  and  more 
en  joy  ably? — not  only  has  a  good  time  out  of 
it  all;  he  learns  to  know  what  is  worth  while 
in  pleasures  and  occupations.  He  learns  the 
art  of  choice — choice  of  pleasures,  choice  of 
occupations,  choice  of  friends,  choice  of  the 
experiences  that  seem  to  him  valuable.     And 

100 


COLLEGE  LIFE  AND  COLLEGE  EDUCATION 

still  more  important,  his  experiences  give  him 
an  open  mind  toward  other  men's  tastes  and 
pursuits. 

So  much  for  life  in  college.  But  the  end 
of  liberal  education  differs  from  this  only 
in  degree,  not  in  kind.  Liberal  education 
gives  a  knowledge  of  the  principles  by  which 
men  act,  have  acted  in  the  past,  and  will  act 
in  the  future.  The  man  who  acquires  it  learns 
to  know  what  is  worth  while — but  from  a  far 
broader  experience  than  his  own  personal  as- 
sociations can  give  him.  He  also  learns  the 
art  of  choice — though  here  the  choices  are  in 
knowledge  and  belief  rather  than  in  the  more 
domestic  relations  of  life.  Most  of  all,  he 
broadens  and  deepens  his  mind  until  it  is 
"liberalized,'*  until  it  is  made  free  of  the  world 
that  man's  intellect  has  conquered  for  us. 

And  thus  college  education  in  its  high  meas- 
ure and  college  life  in  its  minor  fashion  both 
drive  at  the  same  general  results.  Both  aim 
at  a  sense  of  proportion  in  living;  both  aim 
at  a  useful,  active  knowledge  of  true  values 
in  life.  But  unfortunately  for  our  peace  of 
mind,  and  unfortunately  for  the  prestige  of  the 
American   degree,   college   education   has   not 

101 


COIXEGE  SONS  AND   COLLEGE  FATHERS 

been  as  successful  in  this  country  as  college 
life.  It  is  this  which  has  led  to  the  conflict 
of  interests  which  all  recognize.  It  is  this 
which  has  led  to  the  teacher's  depreciation 
of  college  life,  and  the  undergraduate's  neglect 
of  college  education,  both  of  which  I  deplore. 
We  will  never  find  the  remedy  by  turning 
sour  faces  on  the  intense  and  romantic  life  of 
the  campus,  as  if  our  ideal  were  a  day-school 
where  athletics  consisted  of  dumbbell  exercises 
and  the  pupils  should  know  one  another  not 
half  so  well  as  their  books.  College  life  has 
been  too  genuinely  successful  for  such  silly 
contempt.  The  proof  is  that  the  most  notice- 
able characteristic  of  the  college  graduate  to- 
day is  neither  culture  nor  efficiency  nor  in- 
tellectual grasp — all  of  which  in  varying  meas- 
ures he  may  possess — ^but  an  easy  attitude 
toward  the  world  of  men.  He  may  take  his 
B.A.  with  little  knowledge  and  less  mental 
discipline  to  his  credit;  but  he  cannot  get 
through  four  years  of  an  American  college 
without  learning  to  adjust  himself  gracefully 
to  all  manner  of  men  and  many  varieties  of 
ideas.  If  he  has  not  been  given  vision,  at 
least  he  has  not  lived  perforce  under  a  rain  of 


COLLEGE  LIFE  AND  COLLEGE  EDUCATION 

ideas  and  in  a  nest  of  different  opinions  with- 
out learning  to  distrust  the  dogmatic.  If  he 
has  not  been  taught  to  think  for  himself,  at 
least  he  has  not  dwelt  in  terms  of  unusual 
intimacy  with  companions  of  diverse  interests, 
and  personalities  still  more  diverse,  without 
learning  to  be  courteous  to  a  new  point  of  view 
when  he  meets  one,  without  learning  a  little  of 
how  it  best  profits  a  man  to  conduct  his  life 
and  direct  his  thoughts.  I  cannot  always 
tell  a  college  man  by  what  he  knows,  or  by 
what  he  does;  but  I  can  well-nigh  invariably 
distinguish  him  if,  in  a  miscellaneous  gathering, 
I  can  see  how  he  listens,  or  hear  him  talk. 
And  these  virtues  he  owes  not  entirely,  but  in 
large  measure,  to  the  informal  education  that 
comes  from  merely  living  in  college. 

But  the  soil  of  college  life  is  light.  An  easy 
manner,  a  ready  tolerance,  a  flexible  mind,  are 
greatly  to  be  desired;  they  do  not,  however, 
guarantee  the  sense  for  values  and  the  power 
Iq  handle  life  that  only  education  in  a  stricter 
sense  can  give.  Playing  on  the  teams,  compet- 
ing for  social  honors,  living  in  happy  haphazard 
in  dormitories,  acquiring  knowledge  in  droves, 
and  sharing  intensely  in  the  vivid,  strenuous 

103 


v/ 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

activity  that  surges  in  and  out  of  an  American 
college — all  this  is  admirable  preparation  for 
learning  what  is  worth  while  in  life.  But 
ingredients  stiflfer  than  sociability  and  com- 
petitive endeavor  must  be  present  if  we  are  to 
grow  a  knowledge  of  how  to  live  that  will 
weather  the  storms  of  practical  life  and  resist 
the  chill  of  middle  age.  The  soil  must  be  richer. 
And  this  is  why  the  success  of  college  life 
has  been,  on  the  whole,  so  unsatisfactory.  We 
have  been  graduating  "good  mixers"  by  the 
hundred;  but  somehow  we  have  failed  to  turn 
their  breadth  of  mind  into  breadth  of  thinking. 
They  are  liberal  enough  in  their  opinion;  but 
they  lack  liberality  of  spirit.  They  are  tolerant 
enough  of  their  fellows;  but  they  lack  the 
knowledge  that  must  accompany  tolerance  in 
life.  It  becomes  increasingly  clear  that  the 
American  college  graduate  needs  more  educa- 
tion in  the  good  old  narrow  sense  of  the  word, 
more  training  in  thinking,  more  thought.  He 
needs  an  honest  knowledge  of  the  great  prin- 
ciples that  underlie  human  thought  and  action, 
the  principles  that  have  been  crystallized  in 
the  modem  humanities — history,  literature, 
social  and  natural  science,  art,  and  the  rest. 

104 


COLLEGE  LIFE  AND  COLLEGE  EDUCATION 

It  is  through  these  abstracts  and  ehxirs  that  he 
must  deepen  his  comprehension  of  why  and  how 
things  happen  in  hfe.  Otherwise,  no  matter 
how  active  and  how  varied  his  extra-curriculum 
life,  he  must  intrust  his  course  (as  many  have 
to  do)  to  a  harsh  pilot— experience — find  out  as 
he  goes,  learn  fully  at  the  end  of  life,  perhaps, 
but  less  at  the  beginning — in  a  word,  forego 
that  college  education  which  is  less  romantic 
but  more  essential  than  college  life. 

And  it  is  this  very  college  education,  let  us 
confess  it  frankly,  that  has  been  less  successful 
than  college  life.  It  has  not  so  strongly 
stamped  our  graduates.  It  has  not  entered 
into  their  imagination  so  pervasively;  nor, 
except  in  the  realm  of  practical  efficiency,  has 
it  so  deeply  influenced  their  after  life.  I  do 
not  mean  that  our  play  in  college  has  had .  a 
greater  absolute  effect  upon  this  generation 
than  our  work.  I  mean  that,  with  due  regard 
for  relative  importances,  play  has  accomplished 
the  most.  No  need  to  reiterate  the  old  reasons : 
that  no  man  can  place  his  heart  and  soul  in 
the  keeping  of  the  football  team,  and  at  the 
same  time  learn  economics;  nor  center  his 
entire  ambition  on  "making  a  fraternity"  and 

105 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

still  get  educated.  If  college  life  runs  thus  to 
excess  it  is  partly  because  the  charms  of  divine 
philosophy  and  other  college  subjects  are  not 
strong  enough  to  hold  it  back.  Instead  of 
damning  college  life,  its  romance  and  its  realism 
together,  let  us  search  out  other,  deeper  reasons 
for  the  unsatisfactory  achievements  of  liberal 
education. 

Two  at  least  I  see  with  clarity.  The  first 
is  that  the  average  undergraduate  does  not 
practically  and  effectively  believe  in  breadth 
of  thinking.  He  does  not  believe  in  it  with  the 
only  kind  of  faith  that  is  worth  anything,  the 
faith  that  works  miracles — and  illustrates  his 
skepticism  daily  by  refusing  to  take  educa- 
tion with  half  the  seriousness  he  expends  upon 
the  hours  between  afternoon  lectures  and  dinner- 
time. I  have  discussed  elsewhere  this  lack  of 
faith — a  resistance  in  the  class-room  that  every 
professor  feels,  a  resistance  as  strong,  though 
almost  as  hidden,  as  that  of  a  coil  of  wire  to 
the  current  that  runs  through  it.  And  it  is 
scarcely  necessary  to  add  that  the  successful 
rivalry  of  college  life  is  also  a  factor  and  a  large 
one.  But  the  second  reason  I  have  not  dis- 
cussed, partly  because   it   is   highly   personal, 

106 


COLLEGE  LIFE  AND  COLLEGE  EDUCATION 

partly  because  if  the  first  were  remedied  it 
would   no   longer  exist.     I   mean   the   deadly 
effect  of  this  American  indifference  to  educa-      »/^ 
tion  upon  the  college  professor  himself. 

I  do  not  know  whether  it  is  scientific,  but 
at  least  it  is  instructive  to  estimate  the  pro- 
fessor's expenditure  of  energy  in  an  average 
recitation — lectures  are  less  laborious  because, 
requiring  less  of  a  class,  they  meet  with  less 
resistance — in,  say,  foot-pounds.  Thirty  foot- 
pounds, let  us  suppose,  go  into  the  arduous 
but  stimulating  process  of  preparation.  Thirty 
are  consumed  in  the  pleasant  and  invigorating 
operation  of  really  teaching  an  aroused  and 
interested  class.  Well,  then,  a  good  forty  are 
exhausted,  burned  up,  wasted,  in  merely  over- 
coming resistance  to  knowing — in  fighting  in- 
difference, and  sometimes  sullen  dislike.  I 
am  not  trying  to  escape  from  the  teacher's 
burden.  The  normal  student  mind  dislikes 
hard  work  just  as  the  normal  body  dislikes 
it.  There  will  always  be  inertia  to  overcome; 
always  the  resistance  of  matter  against  which 
mind  must  struggle.  But  here  is  a  needless 
expenditure;  here  is  unrecompensed  loss.  If 
college   education    has   not   lived    up   to   the 

107 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

greatness  of  its  opportunity,  this  is  one  explana- 
tion. College  education,  after  all,  w  the  college 
professor.  And  he  is  wearied  before  he  can 
begin  his  task. 

Worse  lies  behind.  He  is  not  only  wearied; 
sometimes  he  is  rendered  inefficient;  some- 
times he  is  dcrcducated  in  those  very  qualities 
that  it  is  his  business  to  teach — breadth  of 
knowledge,  breadth  of  sympathy,  wisdom  in 
knowing  and  choosing  the  means  of  life.  The 
sluggishness  of  college  education  is  sometimes 
said  to  be  due  to  the  lamentable  fact  that,  in 
plain  American,  the  professor  is  not  always 
**up  to  his  job."  If  this  is  true,  why  then 
(to  keep  to  plain  American)  one  reason  is  that 
he  exhausts  himself  in  the  attempt  to  "get  it 
over,"  and  becomes  less  broad  than  his  pro- 
fession, less  stimulating  than  the  subjects  he 
should  teach.  He  may  lose  his  sense  of  propor- 
tion, and,  with  far  greater  opportunities,  become 
less  valuable  to  the  cause  of  liberal  education 
than  the  trivialities  of  college  life. 

I  remember  once  being  first  bored,'  then 
amused,  then  fascinated  by  a  traveling-man 
who,  through  a  long  journey  over  the  Penn- 
sylvania  hills,  interpreted   the  country  about 

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COLLEGE  LIFE  AND  COLLEGE  EDUCATION 

us  in  terms  of  vacuum  cleaners.  The  streams 
were  potential  sources  of  current  for  his  ma- 
chines; the  villages  he  knew  by  the  names  of 
the  purchasers;  in  the  towns  he  exulted  over 
virgin  stores  of  still  unsucked  dirt.  So  it  is 
occasionally  with  some  professors  of  the  modern 
humanities.  They  have  worked  so  hard  to 
sell  their  commodities  that  they  have  come  to 
put  an  undue  emphasis  upon  their  value.  They 
see  the  world  in  terms  of  their  own  subjects, 
and  otherwise  are  blind. 

Many  such  men  exist,  and  some  help  to  make 
the  world  more  humorous.  I  know  a  biologist 
who  when  he  dines  out  has  an  uncomfortable 
habit  of  studying  the  effect  of  the  food  values 
consumed  upon  his  neighbors.  There  are  stories 
afloat  in  most  college  towns  of  the  perils  through 
which  the  children  of  psychologists  must  pass 
before  they  reach  the  age  when  they  can  protect 
themselves  against  experimentation.  Carried 
to  an  extreme,  this  makes  the  so-called  "aca- 
demic manner"  that  makes  men  mad.  This 
leads  to  an  insistence  upon  the  superior  value 
of  sociology  or  literature  or  history  in  com- 
parison with  all  the  rest  of  knowledge  or  expe- 
rience. One  may  forgive,  perhaps,  the  member 

109 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

of  a  faculty  who  neglects  the  "big  game"  of 
his  college  for  matters  he  considers  more  im- 
portant. One  does  not  forgive  the  man  who 
makes  it  plain  to  his  classes  that  without  an 
expert  knowledge  of  physics  or  economics 
or  history  life  on  this  contemptible  planet  is 
entirely  without  justification.  Such  a  teacher 
has  cut  his  efficiency  in  half,  because  he  has 
lost  his  sense  of  proportion.  He  has  lost  it, 
like  the  Israelites,  in  struggling  desperately 
and  devotedly  against  the  stubborn  resistance 
of  the  Philistines.  But  no  matter  how  noble 
the  cause,  it  is  gone. 

I  am  reluctant  to  be  called  pessimistic,  and  so 
I  hasten  to  add  that  instances  of  this  kind  are 
not  nearly  so  common  in  American  universities 
as  critics  believe.  The  undergraduate  whose 
interests  are  confined  to  football,  musical 
comedy,  and  the  success  of  his  fraternity  is 
easily  persuaded  that  the  man  who  tries  to 
teach  him  government  or  geology  takes  his 
subject  too  seriously.  Nevertheless,  here  is 
a  very  real  reason  why  college  education  does 
not  always  "get  over"  in  college.  The  teacher 
who  has  to  pound  away  too  hard  may  forget 
what  he  is  pounding  on,  and  almost  why.     He 

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COLLEGE  LIFE  AND  COLLEGE  EDUCATION 

is  like  the  woodpecker  that  pecked  on  a  rubber 
sponge  until  its  head  came  off.  From  that 
portion  of  his  labors  that  is  ineffectual  he  suf- 
fers, as  all  must,  an  undue  measure  of  weariness 
and  pain.  Often  he  is  tempted,  and  no  won- 
der, to  turn  his  best  energies  in  more  profitable 
directions,  and  give  his  second-best  to  his  in- 
different classes.  In  any  case — whether  weary 
or  humorless,  discouraged  or  evasive — he  may 
become  a  drag  upon  college  education.  The 
effort  required  to  interest  Americans  in  getting 
educated  has  been  costly  to  him,  and  costly  to 
them  also.  Nor  can  we  look  for  relief  to  those 
happy  spirits  who  are  not  troubled  by  resistance; 
who  sail  on  and  over  the  recalcitrant  mind  while 
they  teach,  spreading  their  sails  to  the  breeze 
of  their  own  eloquence,  content  with  indifference 
if  it  is  amiable,  and  uncritical  of  interest  so 
long  as  it  is  awake.  They  will  never  lead  us 
into  blue  water,  for  their  sense  of  the  worth- 
while is  of  too  light  a  draught.  They  belong 
to  college  life  rather  than  to  college  educa- 
tion. 

The  whole  question  of  success  or  failure  in 
American  education  is  just  now  tremendously 
pertinent.     Even  being  an  American  is  a  fear- 

8  111 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

ful  responsibility.  As  I  read  the  morning 
paper  in  a  meditative  mood,  I  feel  as  may 
have  felt  the  inhabitants  of  some  walled  town 
in  sixth-century  France,  when  the  old  world 
to  the  southward  flared  into  confused  warfare 
and  fell  away  in  ruin.  Like  them,  we  must 
stand  for  a  while  on  our  own  feet;  like  them, 
I  suppose  (for  history  does  not  record  their 
psychology),  we  search  our  hearts  to  see  what 
civilization  is  in  us.  The  experience  is  sobering. 
One  realizes  how  ill-digested  is  our  European 
culture;  how  little  it  has  worked  as  yet  into 
the  blood  and  sinew  of  a  distinctive  Amer- 
icanism. One  realizes  still  more  how  many 
alien  illiterates  there  are  who  have  scarcely 
begun  the  assimilative  process — how  many 
alien  literates  who  may  refuse  the  native  educa- 
tion we  offer  to  them.  American  culture  will 
have  to  be  modified;  that  is  clear.  And  yet 
it  must  be  kept  culture,  and  must  be  kept 
American,  if  America  is  to  remain  (and  become) 
American.  I  do  not  suppose  that  any  of  us 
yet  realizes  the  magnitude  of  the  task,  nor  the 
responsibility  it  will  place  upon  our  colleges. 
We  shall  need  faith.  We  shall  need  to  work 
with,  not  against,  the  professor. 

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COLLEGE  LIFE  AND  COLLEGE  EDUCATION 

It  is  hard  to  write  of  education  without 
letting  the  pen  fly  into  generalities.  The  term 
itself  is  so  broad,  so  meaningful,  that  it  is 
difficult  to  keep  to  the  concrete.  Emerson 
states  as  well  as  any  one  the  difficult  task  that 
lies  before  those  who  would  teach  the  modern 
humanities,  but  even  Emerson  escapes  into 
somewhat  nebulous  verities: 

Can  rules  or  tutors  educate 
The  semi-god  whom  we  await? 
He  must  be  musical. 
Tremulous,  impressional. 
Alive  to  gentle  influence 
Of  landscape  and  of  sky. 
And  tender  to  the  spirit-touch 
Of  man's  or  maiden's  eye: 
But  to  his  native  center  fast. 
Shall  into  Future  fuse  the  Past, 
And  the  world's  flowing  fates  in  his  own  mold 
recast. 

And  yet  college  education  is  really  just  as  con- 
crete as  college  life.  For  it  amounts  to  little 
unless  it  makes  a  man  or  woman  speak  more 
kindly,  act  more  wisely,  think  more  truly. 
And  it  is  good  for  little  until  it  has  crystallized 
and  become  a  part  of  life  itself. 

It  is  this  that  explains  and  sums  up  the  nature 

113 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE   FATHERS 

of  the  problem  that  I  have  been  discussing  in 
this  essay,  and  of  many  other  college  problems 
upon  which  I  have  touched  in  earlier  pages. 
Education,  like  Bergson*s  vital  force,  may  be 
regarded  as  always  beating  upon  the  stubborn 
matter  of  the  brain,  trying  to  transfuse  it, 
trying  to  become  real,  to  become  tangible,  to 
become  life.  Like  Falstaflf's  "honor,"  educa- 
tion is  a  word;  it  is  air.  It  has  no  real  ex- 
istence except  in  the  educated  man.  And  he 
is  a  hard-won  triumph  over  intractable  matter 
— flesh,  blood,  and  bone  made  against  their 
own  sodden  nature  to  act  by  thought  and 
according  to  intelligent  will. 

Your  teacher  is  merely  an  instrument. 
Abuse  him,  and  he  will  be  a  bad  one;  weary 
him,  and  he  will  be  ineffective;  destroy  his 
sense  of  proportion,  and  his  usefulness  will 
decrease. 

Your  college  graduate  or  parent  is  a  directing 
force,  to  be  used  on  one  side  or  another  of  this 
great  struggle,  a  struggle  renewed  whenever 
a  child  comes  to  the  age  of  reason,  or  a  race 
moves  upward  into  the  light  of  civilization. 
To  many  observers  it  seems  that  the  "average 
American,"  of  whom,  as  is  right  in  a  democracy, 

114 


COLLEGE  LIFE  AND  COLLEGE  EDUCATION 

we  are  all  afraid,  has  taken  the  part  of  bone 
and  blood  and  flesh.  At  most  he  has  tolerated 
higher  education.  Sometimes  he  has  sneered 
at  it,  and  sent  his  children  to  college  wrapped  / 
in  the  triple  brass  of  indifference,  ready  to 
perform  lip-service  only. 

Your  undergraduate  represents  matter — 
tractable  or  intractable — in  whom  we  try  to 
grow  that  sense  of  values  which  is  the  fine 
flower  of  liberal  education.  He  begins — or  at 
least  his  finer  spirits  begin — to  grow  weary  of 
being  intractable.  He  begins  to  strike  out  at 
the  stupid  conventions  of  the  American  college, 
which  require  activity  and  condemn  thought. 
He  begins  to  criticize  the  curriculum  and  his 
own  attitude  toward  it;  he  begins  to  look  out 
upon  America;  is  superciliously  contemptuous 
of  our  magazines,  amused  by  our  best-sellers, 
repelled  by  the  narrow  intensity  of  our  busi- 
ness life.  He  even  begins  to  be  interested  in 
American  politics.  In  a  word,  the  undergraduate 
is  at  last  getting  educated.     . 

It  will  be  hard  for  the  average  American  to       v/ 
throw  his  influence  upon  the  side  of  spirit — 
and  the  professor — in  this  struggle  with  matter. 
It  will  be  hard  for  him  to  accept  the  new  era; 

115 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

for  the  success  of  college  education  will  reveal 
itself  first  in  a  respect  for,  many  things — 
science,  art,  literature,  music,  political  and 
economic  theory — for  which  he  has  had  scant 
reverence.  The  increased  efficiency  in  busi- 
ness, in  the  professions,  and  in  money-making 
generally  that  is  bound  to  follow,  will  show 
itself  much  more  slowly;  as  will  the  still  greater 
improvement  in  the  art  of  living  that  should 
be  the  perfect  consummation  of  a  successful 
training  in  the  modern  humanities.  But  you 
cannot  down  a  sense  of  due  proportion  once  it 
begins  to  ripen.  And  fortunately,  the  Amer- 
icans who  send  their  children  to  college  are 
average  only  when  taken  in  the  mass.  In- 
dividually, most  of  them  will  be  on  our  side 
when  they  understand  the  importance  of  what 
we  are  trying  to  "get  over"  with  such  labor 
and  weariness,  against  such  an  undue  and  un- 
wise resistance  from  minds  whose  profit  we 
seek. 

There  is  nothing  wrong  with  the  idea  of  the 
American  college,  except  growing-pains.  It 
has  not  failed.  It  has  but  recently  gone  to 
trial;    and  on  some  counts  it  already  stands 

acquitted.     Our   college   has  given   us   a   new 

116 


COLLEGE  LIFE  AND  COLLEGE  EDUCATION 

kind  of  American,  more  versatile,  more  gre- 
garious, more  urbane,  more  moral  in  the  pur- 
suit of  affairs,  and  more  accessible  to  ideas  than 
all  but  the  pick  of  the  generation  before  the 
Civil  War.  That  it  has  not  yet  guaranteed  real 
education,  or  insured  true  breadth  of  thought,  y 
is  due  not  to  the  romance  of  college  life,  but  to 
the  lack  of  faith  in  college  education.  And 
that  the  professor  should  have  to  fight  for 
things  lovely  and  of  good  report  until  his  arms 
are  weakened  and  his  vision  dimmed  reveals 
a  lack  in  the  average  American  of  precisely 
that  sense  of  proportion  which  it  is  the  function 
of  the  college  to  teach.  His  sense  of  humor 
has  failed  him  for  once.  It  needs  to  be  lib- 
eralized;  it  needs  to  be  educated. 


CULTURE  AND  PREJUDICE 

CERTAIN  British  essayists  of  the  perverse 
school  have  discovered  a  new  way  of  dis- 
lodging from  the  minds  of  their  readers  a  prej- 
udice against  new  ideas.  They  blast  it  out 
with  a  paradox.  The  method  is  surprisingly 
simple.  You  begin  by  asserting,  for  example, 
that  dogs  are  more  moral  than  men.  The 
statement  catches  the  attention  of  the  sleepiest 
reader,  arouses  his  antagonisms,  and  forces 
him  to  mobilize  his  powers  of  resistance.  That 
is,  it  wakes  him  up — which  was  all  the  wily 
writer  desired.  To  withdraw  from  an  unten- 
able paradox — as,  for  instance,  to  show  that 
dogs  are  moral  according  to  their  lights,  and 
men  immoral  by  theirs — is  as  easy  as  to  make 
one.  The  paradox  is  the  bell  on  the  engine  of 
logic;     it   is   the   horn   on   the   automobile   of 

thought. 

118 


CULTURE  AND  PREJUDICE 

Some  horn,  some  bell,  is  necessary  in  order 
to  get  a  hearing  amid  the  clamor  of  criticism, 
argument,  and  diatribe  that  hangs  like  the  roar 
of  a  city  over  our  educational  councils.  Greek 
has  been  carried  out  from  the  noisy  assemblage 
in  the  agonies  of  dissolution;  Latin  has  been 
banged  into  decrepitude;  mathematics  is  totter- 
ing; grammar  and  spelling  are  prostrate,  with 
new  and  uncouth  shapes — blacksmithing,  mil- 
linery, sex  hygiene  stepping  over  them  into 
the  curriculum.  To  one  who  wishes  to  say  a 
quiet  word  in  this  confusion  a  paradox  may  be 
pardoned.  Is  it  paradoxical  to  assert  that  the 
American  attitude  toward  education  is  more 
faulty  than  the  curriculum.'^ 

There  are  two  kinds  of  education:  one  cer- 
tain, the  other  uncertain;  one  direct  in  its 
application  and  obvious  in  its  results,  the  other 
indirect  in  its  methods,  with  effects  that  must 
be  deduced  from  the  life  of  the  recipient.  One 
education  teaches  how  to  work  in  order  to 
live;  the  other  how  to  live  in  order,  among 
other  things,  to  work.  The  first  we  have  re- 
named "vocational  training,"  given  its  ancient 
precepts  a  fresh  coat  of  paint,  and  set  it  up  as 

an  enviable  novelty;  the  other,  for  want  of  some 
119 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

more  specific  title,  we  still  call  a  "liberal  educa- 
tion." 

These  two  kinds  of  education  are  comple- 
mentary and  equally  important.  Both  have 
been  always  necessary  to  civilization.  Both 
always  will  be  necessary;  and  their  respective 
services  are  defined  not  by  theory,  but 
by  the  needs  of  men  and  the  times.  Yet 
prejudice,  obstinacy,  and  blindness  have  set 
their  advocates  by  the  ears  and  led  to  scho- 
lastic wars  that  differ  from  the  fierce  conflicts 
of  the  medieval  universities  only  in  being  more 
wordy  and  less  picturesque.  I  have  heard  the 
rights  and  wrongs  of  a  liberal  education  bitterly 
discussed  in  Parisian  cafes  and  upon  New 
England  mountain-tops.  At  the  extremity  of 
a  California  canon,  beneath  rock  walls  as  high 
and  more  remote  than  Yoscmite's,  on  a  trail 
that  hung  between  waterfall  and  precipice,  I 
have  been  stopped  by  a  high-school  principal 
until  I  should  tell  him  what  I  thought  of 
vocationalism  in  tlie  schools.  No  modern 
teacher  or  student  or  parent  can  much  longer 
escape  the  necessity  of  taking  a  stand  in  this 
controversy  and — what  is  far  better — thinking 
it  out. 

120 


CULTURE  AND  PREJUDICE 

There  is  nothing  new  in  vocational  education, 
nor  can  it  always  be  distinguished  from  the 
other  variety.  A  false  emphasis  leads  us  to 
think  of  it  in  terms  of  those  applied  sciences 
— electrical  engineering,  chemistry,  hygiene — 
that  are  new  in  principle,  or  those  crafts  — 
dressmaking,  bookkeeping,  stenography — that 
are  new  in  the  curriculum.  But  Latin,  as  has 
often  been  said,  was  vocational  in  the  Middle 
Ages  and  the  Renaissance,  when  a  knowledge 
of  that  tongue  was  a  prerequisite  for  all  the 
professions  except  arms.  Mathematics  is  both 
vocational  and  liberal.  Even  such  abstract 
subjects  as  astronomy  may  become  vocational, 
as  fiction  reminds  us,  when  the  hero,  ship- 
wrecked upon  an  island,  saves  his  life  from 
cannibals  by  predicting  an  eclipse.  All  training 
directly  applicable  to  the  problem  of  sub- 
sistence is  vocational,  although  its  nature  may 
vary  with  the  race,  the  age,  and  the  environ- 
ment involved. 

If  man  could  live  by  bread  alone  we  might 
be  content  with  vocational  education.  By  that 
very  intellectual  unrest  that  makes  for  evolu- 
tion he  cannot.  Having  eaten,  he  must  learn 
to  use  the  life  he  has  preserved.     But  while 

121 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

sustenance  is  theoretically  a  very  simple  prob- 
lem— being  only  a  question  of  how  much  you 
can  earn  and  what  you  can  buy  ^ath  it — the 
use  one  makes  of  the  vital  energy  into  which 
life  transforms  is  the  most  complex  and  dif- 
ficult of  all  questions.  Religion,  ethics,  educa- 
tion, all  bear  upon  it,  intersect  and  blend  so 
that  it  is  almost  as  diflBcult  to  say  what  teaches 
one  to  live  as  to  answer  the  question  of  how  to 
live  itself.  It  is  enough  to  observe  that  educa- 
tion has  a  part  here  which  is  not  vocational, 
and  which  is  enormously  important. 

This  is  the  province  of  liberal  education. 
Its  services  are  indirect,  because  its  effects 
must  be  transmuted  into  the  art  of  living; 
they  are  uncertain  in  the  same  proportion  as 
all  life  is  illusory  and  never  to  be  confined  in 
|/  measures  made  by  man.  Nevertheless,  al- 
though these  services  are  indefinite  in  their 
breadth,  at  least  we  can  specify  some  of  them. 
We  know,  for  example,  that  the  mind  must  be 
able  to  grasp  abstractions;  and  so  we  apply 
mathematics.  We  know  that  it  must  have 
perspective  and  background  if  it  is  to  under- 
stand the  passing  show  of  brief  reality  allowed 
it;  and  so  we  instil  history.    We  know  that  it 


CULTURE  AND   PREJUDICE 

must  be  able  to  interpret  character,  to  feel  the 
loftiest  emotion,  to  perceive  beauty  and  enjoy 
it;  and  so  we  give  it  literature  and  the  arts. 
Man  is  to  be  liberalized.  He  is  to  be  taught  to 
comprehend  life. 

It  is  much  more  diflBcult  to  teach  com- 
prehension of  life  than  control  over  nature. 
Consider,  for  instance,  the  necessary  imper- 
fections of  such  an  instrument  as  history,  which, 
itself  but  a  crude  and  inaccurate  representa- 
tion of  an  earlier  period,  must  be  interpreted 
and  assimilated  by  the  reader  before  it  can  be 
applied  to  a  new  age  where  many  factors  are 
different  and  some  unknown.  And  compare 
it  with  the  applied  science  of  civil  engineering, 
where  a  fixed  body  of  principles  turned  upon  a 
mountain  or  a  swamp  will  yield  invariable 
results.  Indeed,  it  will  never  be  easy  to  teach 
the  liberal  arts;  and  we  have  increased  the 
burden  of  the  task  by  an  obstinate  conservatism 
which  clings  to  the  old  because  it  has  been 
successful  and  distrusts  the  new  because  it 
may  fail.  The  curriculum  of  liberal  education 
is  always  and  persistently  behind  the  times. 
Nevertheless,  we  must  try  to  make  it  effective. 
We  must  teach  control  over  thought  as  well  as 

123 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

control  over  matter;  we  must  make  America 
liberal  as  well  as  efficient,  or  drop  back  from 
civilization. 

If  we  have  failed  to  do  so,  it  is  chiefly  because 
the  American  college  and  the  American  student 
and  the  American  parent  have  persistently 
misunderstood  the  nature,  the  value,  and  the 
purpose  of  liberal  education.  The  schools  and 
colleges,  for  example,  fought  science  as  a  liberal 
subject  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  after  Huxley 
had  demonstrated  its  cultural  value.  The 
student  supposed  to  be  studying  the  "liberal 
arts"  wandered  often  through  the  curriculum, 
like  a  man  in  a  dream,  not  knowing  what  he 
wanted  or  why  he  wanted  it.  The  parents 
who  did  not  want  their  sons  to  become  spe- 
cialists were  as  vague  in  their  conceptions 
of  the  education  they  favored  as  the  entrance 
candidate  who  wrote, "The  Greeks  put  athletics 
into  their  colleges  and  so  invented  modern 
education.'*  Prejudice  and  ignorance  have 
sadly  hampered  liberal  training  in  America. 
There  is  real  danger  of  a  victory  for  "voca- 
tionalism'*  more  costly  than  many  a  defeat. 

A  working  country,  full  of  unskilled  im- 
migrants,  governed   by   the   masses   or   their 

124 


CULTURE  AND  PREJUDICE 

representatives,  whose  highly  educated  classes 
are  all-powerful  neither  in  politics  nor  in  finance, 
such  a  country  will  and  should  desire  vocational 
education.  The  thing  is  so  inevitable  that  one 
wonders  far  more  at  the  sleepy  endurance  of 
purely  theoretical  education  for  generations 
than  at  the  demand  only  a  few  decades  old 
for  technical  education  in  the  colleges  and  the 
still  more  recent  clamor  for  a  secondary-school 
training  in  the  business  of  life.  To  oppose  such 
a  desire  by  empty  talk  about  the  unique  value 
of  the  humanities  as  a  means  of  educating  every- 
body is  as  dangerous  as  it  is  foolish.  To  hold 
back  from  our  obligation  to  improve  the  work- 
ing eflBciency  of  the  race  is  a  plain  dereliction. 
Every  impartial  observer  must  welcome  the 
progress  of  vocational  education,  whether  in 
institutes  for  the  negroes,  public  schools,  or 
Harvard,  Columbia,  and  Yale. 

No  one  need  fear  that  we  may  be  too  suc- 
cessful in  teaching  the  vocations.  The  danger 
lies  in  the  possibility  that  when  the  vocation- 
alists  have  forced  their  program  upon  the 
somewhat  reluctant  schools  they  may  be  as 
blind  in  their  triumph  as  their  opponents  have 
been  obstinate  in  their  conservatism.     Culture 

125 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

will  persist  against  most  odds.  The  desire 
to  think  truly,  to  live  finely,  is  inherent  in  every 
high  civilization.  You  cannot  eliminate  it  by 
restricting  the  liberal  studies  which  by  common 
consent  contribute  to  its  development.  Men 
are  born  into  the  world  every  day  who  in  al- 
most any  conceivable  environment  will  strive 
after  culture  and  in  some  measure  attain  it. 
Leadership  in  any  direction  brings  witli  it  the 
possession  of  culture  in  its  rudiments  and  the 
desire  for  more.  Whether  or  not  a  nation  is 
educated  liberally,  it  will  have  its  cultured 
classes.  And  while  in  a  modern  democracy 
these  classes  may  not  control  the  government, 
they  are  bound  to  lead  thought  and  sooner  or 
later  to  inspire  important  action.  Therefore, 
if  the  impetuous  cohorts  who  are  demanding 
an  education  completely  vocational  in  our 
schools,  and  to  a  less  extent  in  our  colleges, 
should  conquer  without  restraint;  if  in  their 
hour  of  victory  they  should  make  their  system 
as  inflexible  in  its  exclusion  of  all  that  is  not 
"practical"  as  the  "culturists"  would  gladly 
make  theirs  exclusive  of  all  that  bears  directly 
upon  work  in  the  world,  a  dangerous  separa- 
tion of  classes  would  inevitably  result. 

126 


CULTURE  AND  PREJUDICE 

In  the  late  Roman  Empire  the  governing 
class,  which  was  recruited  from  men  with  a 
legal  plus  a  liberal  education,  became  more  and 
more  distinct  from  the  military  class,  made 
up  in  general  of  professional  fighters  whose 
training  had  been  exclusively  vocational  with 
that  end  in  view.  "But  as  these  hardy  vet- 
erans," says  Gibbon,  speaking  of  the  barbarians 
and  their  control  of  the  legions  in  the  early 
fourth  century,  "who  had  been  educated  in 
the  ignorance  or  contempt  of  the  laws,  were 
incapable  of  exercising  any  civil  offices,  the 
powers  of  the  human  mind  were  contracted  by 
the  irreconcilable  separation  of  talents  as  well 
as  professions.  The  accomplished  citizens  of 
the  Greek  and  Roman  republics,  whose  char- 
acters could  adapt  themselves  to  the  bar,  the 
senate,  the  camp,  or  the  schools,  had  learned 
to  write,  to  speak,  and  to  act  with  the  same  spirit 
and  with  equal  abilities."  As  a  result,  a  popula- 
tion competent  to  govern  but  not  to  defend 
itself  was  exposed  by  an  army  scornful  of  civi- 
lization to  the  fury  of  the  savage  North. 

I    know   too    well    the    dangers   of   analogy 

between  modern  civilization  and  the  Roman, 

to  use  this  example  as   more  than   a   useful 
9  127 


cy 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

illustration  of  my  point.  If  we  exclude  or 
unduly  delimit  a  liberal  training  in  our  colleges, 
and  especially  in  our  schools,  as  sure  as  night 
follows  day  there  will  be  a  decrease,  and  a 
sharp  one,  in  the  intellectual  sympathy  which 
makes  intellectual  leadership  possible.  Cut  out 
history,  cut  out  literature,  cut  out  mathe- 
matics beyond  its  elements,  and  in  a  stroke 
you  cut  three  of  the  bonds  that  unite  so- 
ciety. 

If  this  statement  of  the  case  is  too  figurative, 
give  it  a  more  practical  turn.  Journalism  is 
the  most  powerful  agent  of  government  in 
America;  and  the  potentialities  of  journalism  for 
good  government  are  largely  conditioned  by  its 
power  to  present  facts,  arguments,  ideas  to 
the  multitude.  Already  it  has  been  necessary 
to  reduce  the  political  nourishment  thus  oflFered 
to  the  last  degree  of  digestibility.  But  so  far 
the  writer  of  an  editorial  or  a  news  article  has 
been  able  to  count  upon  a  body  of  knowledge 
and  a  training  in  thought  common  to  all.  In 
the  eighteenth  century  it  took  several  decades 
for  the  French  peasant  to  comprehend  the  ideas 
of  liberty  and  equality  which  the  philosophers 
labored  so  hard  to  present  to  him.     The  il- 

128 


CULTURE  AND  PREJUDICE 

literate  immigrant  hears  without  comprehen- 
sion what  the  New  York  school-boy  now  under- 
stands with  ease.  Cut  out  history  from  the 
schools,  and  a  section  of  the  student's  brain  will 
cease  to  react  to  the  thought  of  the  editorial- 
writer;  cut  out  literature,  and  in  another 
direction  his  responses  will  die;  reduce  mathe- 
matics, and  he  will  relax  his  grasp  upon  ab- 
stract thought.  Abolish  liberal  education  for 
the  masses,  confine  their  training  to  the  narrow 
limits  of  manual  exercise  and  the  mental  dis- 
cipline directly  involved  in  the  production  of 
wealth,  and  they  will  be  insulated  from  such 
broader  movements  of  the  intellect  as  good 
journalism  represents  almost  as  effectively 
as  if  cotton  were  stuffed  in  their  ears  and  their 
eyes  blinded.  The  separation  of  classes  that 
will  follow  will  be  more  dangerous  than  the 
industrial  separation,  because  it  will  be  intel- 
lectual and  spiritual  in  its  divergences. 

All  this,  of  course,  is  no  argument  against 
vocational  education.  It  is  a  plea  for  in- 
telligence on  the  part  of  the  advocates  of  greater 
working  efficiency  in  America.  It  is  a  plea  for 
an  irreducible  minimum  of  liberal  education  be- 
yond which  the  upholders  of  vocational  train- 
ing 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

ing  will  proceed  at  their  peril  and  to  the  na- 
tion's prejudice. 

Far  more  important  than  the  vain  quarrels 
of  conservative  and  radical  is  the  difficult 
endeavor  to  discover  the  limits  of  this  irre- 
ducible minimum.  I  speak  only  for  the  col- 
leges. In  the  colleges  we  propose  to  educate  the 
leaders  in  the  higher  vocations,  the  leaders  in 
culture  and  in  thought.  But  if  a  common 
bond  of  knowledge  and  point  of  view  is  essential 
for  the  nation  at  large,  it  is  none  the  less  essential 
for  its  so-called  educated  class.  The  mechan- 
ical engineer  must  have  some  comprehension 
of  forces  beyond  those  material  ones  with  which 
it  is  his  business  to  contend.  If  he  is  to  labor 
in  a  struggle  for  social  betterment  with  the 
lawyer,  the  doctor,  the  professor,  and  the  bank 
president,  he  must  know  their  language  and  they 
his.  All  must  have  some  common  introduc- 
tion into  tliought.  Life  itself,  of  course, 
supplies,  as  it  requires,  a  bond  of  union.  But 
how  foolish  not  to  prepare  for  this  bond  in 
the  preparation  for  life  which  we  call  educa- 
tion! The  irreducible  minimum  of  a  liberal 
education  in  college  is  a  generous  proportion 
of  energy  spent  upon  the  liberal  arts.     And  this 

ISO 


CULTURE  AND  PREJUDICE 

energy  must  be  expended  in  defiance  of  the 
pressure  that  a  complex  technical  training 
exerts  upon  the  student  whose  studies  are  to 
be  chiefly  vocational. 

The  grotesque  vision  of  a  race  of  specialists 
— engineer  animals,  business  animals,  law  ani- 
mals— burrowing,  scratching,  building  in  their 
world,  each  incredibly  eflScient  in  his  own 
mitier,  like  the  swallow,  the  ground-hog,  or  the 
ant,  each  unable  to  communicate  or  co-operate 
with  his  neighbor  specialist,  is  worthy  of  the 
pen  of  Anatole  France.  As  a  reality,  however, 
it  is  impossible — but  not  because  such  inhu- 
man specialists  could  not  be  developed.  Their 
prototypes  exist  already  in  every  American 
university,  and  still  more  abundantly  in  every 
American  city,  where  engrossing  business  has 
shut  out  the  view  of  fields,  sky,  God,  the  value 
and  purpose  of  life  itself.  Such  a  race  is  im- 
possible because  a  civilization  of  absolute  spe- 
cialists would  fly  apart  like  a  JDursting  bomb 
and  leave  nothing  behind  but  fragments  and  a 
stench. 

The  irreducible  minimum  of  cultural  train- 
ing is  not  the  only  issue  for  which  the  believer 
in  both  kinds  of  education  must  contend.     He 

131 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

must  also  protest  against  a  wide-spread  mis- 
conception of  what  is  "practical"  in  education. 

What  is  "practical"  in  education?  We 
cannot  accept  the  answer  of  the  youth  who  is 
taking  a  "culture  course"  because  it  is  the 
thing  to  do.  He  muddles  through  his  work, 
absorbing  only  what  is  injected  by  forcible 
feeding,  explaining  in  moments  of  fancied 
sincerity  that,  since  culture  is  not  "practical," 
it  is  not  worth  real  work.  What  nonsense! 
In  a  state  of  savagery  nothing  is  practical  that 
•^  does  not  support  life  or  save  it.  In  civiliza- 
tion everything  is  practical  that  enables  one 
to  live  happily  in  a  complex  environment. 
The  ability  to  survey  a  field  is  practical,  but 
so  in  equal  measure  is  the  power  to  reason 
correctly  from  historical  analogy;  so  is  the 
power  to  enjoy  intelligently  a  good  book.  A 
liberal  education,  for  the  right  man,  is  more 
practical  than  any  other.  And  the  right  man 
for  a  liberal  training  is  any  and  every  student 
who  will  profit  more  certainly  by  a  general 
education  in  the  fundamentals  of  living  than 
by  a  special  training  in  technical  knowledge. 

Nevertheless,  one  sees  dozens  of  boys  un- 
fitted by  their  tastes  and  aptitudes  for  technical 

132 


CULTURE  AND  PREJUDICE 

work,  although  thoroughly  educatable  along 
more  general  lines,  who  have  been  sent  to  en- 
gineering schools  or  laboratories  in  order  to 
get  a  practical  education.  I  know  farmers  and 
bankers  who,  as  a  result  of  such  an  error,  have 
been  trained  as  mechanical  engineers,  lawyers 
and  business  men  who  have  been  trained  as 
chemists,  only  to  put  their  practical  specialty 
in  their  pockets  and  forget  it.  Could  anything 
be  more  impractical.'^  Could  anything  be  more 
wasteful  than  a  special  education  which  ex- 
cludes by  its  rigorous  demands  all  higher  in- 
struction in  general  knowledge  and  then  is 
discarded  .^^  Could  any  one  be  less  valuable 
to  society  than  a  business  man,  let  us  say, 
who  fails  after  ten  years  and  then  proposes 
to  fall  back  upon  his  never-digested  and  now 
forgotten  training  as  a  civil  engineer?  And  yet 
this  is  where  our  distrust  of  a  liberal  education 
has  too  often  led  us.  It  is  a  melancholy  but 
illuminating  spectacle  to  watch  the  progress 
of  those  unfortunate  undergraduates  who  are 
urged  by  pressure  from  behind  to  become 
practical  in  a  way  that  for  them  is  the  reverse. 
Some  go  upon  the  rocks  and  sink  before  their 
sophomore  year;    some  yield  up  the  helm  and 

133 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

drive  on  toward  the  limbo  of  the  second-rate, 
from  which  native  talent  alone  can  save  them; 
others,  after  tacking  from  shoal  to  shoal,  take  on 
board  a  new  pilot,  come  back  to  the  starting-line, 
and  begin  their  education  again  with  better  pros- 
pects at  the  expense  of  wasted  energy  and  time. 
In  the  preceding  paragraph  I  have  written 
of  a  group  of  Americans  in  no  way  distinguished 
by  hidden  longings  for  culture,  by  esthetic 
qualities  that  set  them  apart  from  the  every- 
day, or  by  any  rarity  of  spirit.  I  have  in  mind 
merely  a  thoroughly  normal  youth  who  happens 
to  be  non-technical  instead  of  technical  in 
his  interests,  who,  if  left  to  himself,  will  drift 
toward  business  or  law  rather  than  the  profes- 
sions that  require  a  closer  specialization  and 
more  definite  taste.  Such  a  man  will  profit  by 
the  liberal  arts,  even  if  he  never  becomes  "cul- 
tured," for  even  a  modest  knowledge  honestly 
gained  of  history,  literature,  the  languages, 
scientific,  social,  and  political  tliought,  must 
influence  his  life.  Such  a  man  will  waste  his 
energies  in  vocational  studies.  But  the  perverse 
blindness  of  America  to  what  is  really  practical 
in  education  carries  with  it  a  menace  against  a 
far  smaller  but  an  even  more  important  class. 
1S4 


CULTURE  AND  PREJUDICE 

It  is  impossible  to  study  the  individuals 
that  surround  us  without  observing  that,  to 
borrow  the  expressive  terms  of  heredity,  cer- 
tain traits  are  recessive,  others  dominant.  In 
the  majority  of  our  friends  and  neighbors, 
strong  and  delicate  imagination,  moral  sensi- 
tiveness, keen  sensibility,  spirituality,  and  the 
religious  instinct  are  all  of  them  recessive. 
In  a  smaller  number,  one  or  more  of  these  rarer 
qualities  appear.  In  a  minute  minority  all, 
or  most  of  them,  are  dominant.  This  minute 
minority,  with  the  more  numerous  body  who  are 
united  to  them  by  one  bond  or  another  of  sym- 
pathy, are  not  the  leaders  of  society,  though  in 
some  measure  they  may  be  the  salt  of  the  earth. 
Much  of  the  rough  work  of  the  world,  and  some 
of  the  noblest,  must  be  accomplished  by  men  of 
a  coarser  and  perhaps  a  firmer  mold.  But  such 
men  and  women  are  indispensable  to  civiliza- 
tion. They  preserve  the  vision  without  which 
the  nation  perishes.  They  make  the  art  that 
interprets  life  and  adorns  it.  In  times  of  moral 
crisis  it  is  their  surer  instinct  that  saves  us,  if 
we  are  saved.  Their  finer  spirits  only  are  proof 
against  the  allurements  of  easy  wealth  or  the 
specious  necessities  and  rude  intoxication  of 

135 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

war.  The  province  which  the  psychologists 
of  earlier  periods  assigned  with  more  necessity 
than  truth  to  women  belongs  in  the  future  to 
these  men  and  women  who  are  qualified  to  feel 
and  think  truly  where  others  think  and  act  in 
error. 

But  it  is  precisely  for  all  who  belong  in  one 
respect  or  another  to  this  order  of  humanity 
that  a  strong  and  confident  course  in  the  liberal 
arts  is  most  essential.  Without  such  a  course, 
and  the  public  opinion  it  implies,  there  is  con- 
stant danger  that  their  native  instincts  will  be 
starved  or  thwarted.  In  a  country  where 
such  gifts  as  theirs  may  be  called  impractical, 
and  in  colleges  where  their  talents  must  be 
developed  in  an  atmosphere  of  doubt  and  dis- 
trust, in  the  company  of  those  who  dally  with 
the  liberal  arts  while  despising  them,  they 
are  exposed  to  the  temptations  of  dilettanteism 
and  the  dangers  of  diversion  from  their  proper 
careers.  If  a  fondness  for  books,  or  a  love  of 
nature,  or  responsiveness  to  music,  or  any  other 
of  the  symptoms  that  in  early  youth  are  likely 
to  indicate  such  minds  as  I  have  described, 
are  in  America  regarded  as  signs  of  effeminacy 
or  presumptive  failure;    if,  when  it  comes  to 

136 


CULTURE  AND  PREJUDICE 

education,  we  try  to  make  them  practical  in 
the  current  and  fallacious  sense  of  the  word, 
why,  then  again  we  are  impractical.  The 
liberal  arts  conserve  such  spirits  as  these  and 
turn  their  dreams  into  acts  and  power.  America 
has  as  yet  scarcely  learned  the  lesson  that  the 
rarer  gifts  of  the  earth,  if  wasted,  can  be  re- 
placed, if  at  all,  only  at  a  heavy  cost.  When 
shall  we  apply  the  moral  to  the  conservation 
of  the  rarer  qualities  of  man? 

I  began  with  a  paradox  which  I  hope  is  no 
longer  paradoxical.  The  education  we  offer  in 
America,  with  all  its  defects,  is  more  reasonable 
than  the  attitude  of  American  parents  and 
American  students  toward  a  choice  between  its 
varieties.  Through  an  obstinate  refusal  to 
consider  the  different  capabilities  that  inhabit 
different  men  they  have  tried  again  and  again 
to  put  the  wrong  key  in  the  wrong  lock  and 
have  grumbled  because  the  door  has  not  opened. 
As  for  the  schools  and  the  colleges,  they  have 
made  cultural  and  vocational  education  the 
subject  of  clamorous  controversies,  whereas  all 
depends  upon  the  boy — upon  the  training  that 
will  educate  him,  and  which,  therefore,  in  the 
only  true  sense  of  the  word,  will  be  practical. 


THE  COLLEGES  AND  MEDIOCRITY 

THE  writer  of  fiction  may  be  said,  with 
only  a  pardonable  exaggeration,  to  put 
himself  in  the  place  of  the  Almighty.  Venturing 
to  create  a  man,  he  shapes  the  character  of  his 
creature,  molds  and  refines  his  brain,  and  pre- 
pares a  living  instrument  by  which  events  and 
circumstances  can  be  controlled  or  directed 
toward  a  reasonable  destiny.  If  he  is  a  bad 
writer,  the  results  deceive  only  children.  But 
if  he  is  modest  enough  to  study  life,  and  im- 
itate it,  then  he  shares  the  mysterious  power 
of  creative  evolution  and  earns  his  tribute  of 
resjDect. 

The  teacher  also  feels — at  least  in  his  remote 
subconsciousness  —  that  he  shares  or  should 
share  this  power.  He,  too,  must  make  char- 
acter, brains,  efficiency;  and  if  the  part  he 
plays  is  relatively  small,  at  least  when  he  labors 
over  a  boy  in  whom  the  man  is  still  uncreated, 

138 


THE  COLLEGES  AND  MEDIOCRITY 

he  is  engaged  in  no  work  of  the  imagination 
merely.  Except  for  the  parent,  he  is  the  only 
professional  on  the  job;  and, next  to  the  parent, 
he  is  held  most  responsible  for  the  result.  The 
praise  usually  goes  to  the  amateur  elements  in 
the  task — friends,  college  spirit,  the  rigors  of 
athletics,  and  environment;  the  blame  falls 
upon  the  professional  educators — ^the  parents 
and  himself. 

I  am  not  much  concerned  with  the  justice 
or  the  injustice  of  his  claim  for  services  ren- 
dered. This  is  one  of  the  questions  that  must 
go  up  to  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  Last  Judg- 
ment, for  no  sublunary  arbitrator  can  disen- 
tangle the  evidence.  I  merely  wish  to  explain 
the  earnestness  with  which  each  college  pro- 
fessor accepts  his  responsibility,  and  asks,  as 
he  looks  over  his  entering  classes,  *'  Who  among 
you  shall  be  saved?" 

He  means,  of  course,  "Who  among  you  shall 
be  educated .'*" — that  he  identifies  salvation  and 
education  is  due  to  his  professional  bias,  and 
may  be  taken  for  what  it  is  worth.  When  a 
college  education  became  fashionable,  when  the 
little  file  of  the  sons  of  ministers  and  lawyers 
entering  the  college  gates  was  joined  and  sub- 

139 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

merged  by  the  multitude  of  everybody's  sons — 
rich,  poor,  stupid,  brilliant,  ambitious,  and  the 
opposite  —  his  question  first  became  acute. 
Now  it  is  burning.  Shall  the  colleges  spend 
their  abundant  energies  and  their  great,  if  not 
too  effective,  powers  upon  the  few  fit,  or  upon 
the  mass,  the  multitude  of  the  mediocre? 
Shall  we  seek  quality  or  quantity?  I  know 
that  the  question  has  been  answered  a  hundred 
times  in  history;  but  it  has  not  been  answered 
for  twentieth-century  America.  For  America 
just  now  provides  the  greatest  exhibit  the  world 
has  ever  seen  of  successful  mediocrity. 

There  are  no  contented  poor  on  this  side 
of  the  Atlantic  except  in  the  backwaters  of  the 
East.  There  is  no  single  class  content  to  rec- 
ognize the  intellectual  or  material  superiority 
of  the  rest.  Every  one  is  pushing  onward  and 
upward.  The  poor  man,  as  we  are  told  every 
day,  may  be  rich  to-morrow;  the  ignorant  goes 
to  night-school  and  will  learn;  the  drummer 
hopes  to  run  the  business  for  which  he  is  travel- 
ing; the  hired  man  will  own  land  as  good  as 
that  he  plows;  the  clerk  will  be  a  partner  in 
the  firm.  Even  in  the  universities  no  institu- 
tions like  the  fellowships  of  Oxford  and  Cam- 

140 


THE  COLLEGES  AND  MEDIOCRITY 

bridge  can  exist.  In  America  not  even  the 
scholar  is  willing  to  stop  at  such  a  position. 
He  must  go  on — or  try  to  go  on — as  far  as  the 
rest.  Never  before  has  a  nation  exhibited  so 
complete  a  spectacle  of  millions  of  insects  all 
swarming  upward  toward  the  light. 

This  viewmay  be  optimism.  I  do  not  think  so. 
For  in  nine  hundred  cases  out  of  a  thousand 
the  goal  of  all  this  striving  is  mediocrity.  Your 
son  nowadays  does  not  hopef  to  be  President. 
He  climbs  toward  a  much  lower  round  in  the 
ladder.  The  laborer  wishes  to  reach  the 
middle  class.  The  middle  class  wishes  to  be 
richer.  The  upper  class — if  we  have  one — 
hopes  to  make  sure  of  its  perch.  Our  cities 
reflect  the  spirit.  They  rise  like  the  wind  from 
the  empty  prairie  or  the  dense  forest  into  a 
reasonable  similitude  of  the  "business  district" 
of  St.  Louis  or  Chicago,  and  then  stick  at  a 
level  of  ugliness  which  is  not  the  less  ugly  for 
being  metropolitan.  Our  homes  show  it.  A 
semi-colonial  with  porcelain  tubs  and  hardwood 
floors  bounds  the  imagination  of  all  but  the 
artistic  temperament  or  the  millionaire.  Our 
literature  shows  it  most  distinctly  of  all. 
American    newspapers    and    magazines    main- 

141 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

tain,  perhaps,  a  higher  average  of  cx)mp)osition 
than  is  to  be  found  elsewhere,  and  seldom  rise 
above  that  average.  We  show  it  ourselves; 
for  consider  how  much  the  speech  of  one  Amer- 
ican business  man  resembles  that  of  another. 
You  can  sojourn  for  days  in  smoking-cars, 
hotel  corridors,  or  cafes  without  encountering 
an  idea  that  descends  to  the  naive  ignorance 
of  the  peasant  or  lifts  above  mediocrity.  Even 
our  multimillionaires,  the  characteristic  "great 
men"  of  America,  although  in  the  manipula- 
tion of  natural  resources  they  have  risen  above 
the  ordinary,  seem  to  be  mediocre  as  person- 
alities. The  newspapers  are  generous  of  space 
to  every  episode  in  their  domestic  history;  yet 
what  could  be  flatter  than  their  remarks  as 
reported  by  strangers  who  have  rescued  them, 
unaware  of  their  greatness,  from  a  broken-down 
automobile;  what  less  illuminating  than  their 
comments  on  success  in  life;  what  less  interest- 
ing than  their  lives  when  once  the  millions  have 
been  made?    As  a  nation,  we  are  mediocre. 

This  may  be  pessimism.  I  do  not  think  so. 
It  is  the  very  essence  of  the  American  exper- 
iment that  a  vast  body  of  men  and  women 
should  be  raised  as  a  whole  to  a  level  of  comfort, 

14f 


THE  COLLEGES  AND  MEDIOCRITY 

of  intelligence,  of  happiness,  which,  if  far  below 
the  best,  should  be  also  far  above  the  worst. 
And  this  involves,  this  requires  an  enormous 
increase  in  the  total  amount  of  mediocrity. 
Democracy  and  free  immigration  combined 
inevitably  make  for  such  a  result.  It  had  to 
come;  and  our  day's  work  is  still  to  bring  more 
and  more  of  the  illiterate,  the  incapable,  the 
unfortunate  up  to  the  level  of  the  mediocre, 
even  though  the  burden  weighs  us  down,  and 
the  result  seems  to  point  toward  a  future  that 
is  drab  and  dull  and  commonplace.  No  race  can 
escape  from  its  circumstances,  and  these,  in  part 
by  choice,  in  part  by  the  chance  of  inheritance 
in  a  rich  and  undeveloped  continent,  are  ours. 
I  would  not  deal  so  freely  in  generalizations 
if  I  did  not  feel  that  they  were  self-evident; 
nor  would  I  write  of  this  subject  at  all  if  I 
did  not  believe  that  it  lay  on  the  very  heart  of 
the  American  colleges.  I  do  not  suppose  that 
the  college  is  more  vital  in  American  life  than 
any  one  of  a  dozen  agencies  committed  by 
nature  to  idealism  and  usefulness.  But  I 
think  that  no  individual  confronts  more  in- 
evitably the  problem  of  the  mediocre  than  the 
professor  in  an  American  college. 

lo  143 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

For  see  the  mass  of  undergraduates  which 
are  drawn  from  all  the  social  classes,  but  chiefly 
from  those  that  have  already  attained  medioc- 
rity, and  flung  at  his  head.  Among  them,  to 
be  sure,  are  a  few  of  the  brilliantly  ambitious 
who  will  use  more  than  can  be  given  to  them; 
but  in  far  greater  numbers  are  the  brilliant  and 
unambitious  who  will  use  nothing  unless  it  is 
forced  upon  them,  the  stupid  but  well-meaning 
who  have  to  be  fed  with  a  spoon,  and  the  back- 
ward and  unmeaning  who  must  be  cudgeled 
along  after  the  rest.  Where  shall  the  bewil- 
dered teacher  apply  his  goad?  Whom  shall  he 
permit  to  fall  behind?  How  shall  he  keep 
pace  with  the  leaders  without  scattering  the 
herd? 

There  can  be  no  question  as  to  personal 
choice.  I  have  heard  more  than  one  man  of 
experience  remark  that  there  is  no  pleasure  in 
teaching  an  undergraduate  whose  grade  is 
below  seventy-five  per  cent.;  and,  while  I  do 
not  believe  it,  I  have  seldom  heard  the  state- 
ment contradicted.  Indeed,  in  the  universities, 
the  best  scholars  on  the  faculty,  unless  they 
love  teaching  for  itself  or  are  controlled  by 
necessity  or  circumstance,  gravitate  generally 

144 


THE  COLLEGES  AND  MEDIOCRITY 

toward  small  and  selected  classes  or  graduate 
work.  And  it  would  be  easy  and  pleasant  for 
all  of  us  to  concentrate  upon  the  exceptional 
students — to  educate  them,  even  if  the  rest 
should  go  unwashed  by  the  waters  of  knowledge. 
When  circumstances  are  favorable,  the  forcing 
of  a  needle  into  soft  iron  is  not  more  difficult 
than  to  push  one  really  new  idea  into  an  imma- 
ture brain.  But  if  circumstances  are  unfa- 
vorable, if  there  are  thirty  brains  of  all  ranges 
of  capability  to  be  manipulated,  the  difficulty 
is  multiplied.  I  can  give  one  or  two  men  with 
good  minds  and  a  good  environment  behind 
them — I  can  give  them,  if  they  want  it,  a  com- 
prehension of  the  strange  and  moving  literary 
force  called  romanticism,  which,  springing  from 
obscure  reactions  in  the  psychology  of  a  race, 
spreads  through  thought  and  speech  and  action 
until  it  transmutes  into  literature  and  becomes 
a  rosy  semblance  of  the  life  men  would  desire 
to  lead  in  a  world  shaped  by  their  imagination. 
Or  I  can  try  to  give  the  same  conception  to 
all  thirty,  knowing  that  half  the  minds  will  be 
as  blank  as  before,  that  most  of  the  remainder 
will  return  confused  and  broken  images  of  the 

txuth   perhaps   less   valuable   than   blankness, 
lis 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

and  that  the  few  fit  will  profit  less,  because, 
of  necessity,  less  has  been  given  them. 

The  literal  -  minded  will  probably  reply, 
^"  Don't  try  to  teach  romanticism."  Well,  I 
do  not — to  elementary  classes.  But  this  merely 
alters  the  terms  of  the  problem — the  solution 
will  be  the  same.  It  would  be  easiest,  it  would 
be  pleasantest,  it  would  seem  to  be  most  efficient 
in  the  American  colleges,  to  sacrifice  the 
mediocre  to  the  able,  to  dismiss  quantity  and 
hold  fast  to  quality.  And  yet  every  one 
knows  that  this  is  precisely  what  we  do  not  do. 
Every  one  knows,  or  can  find  out  for  the  asking, 
that  in  our  schools  and  all  our  undergraduate 
departments  nine-tenths  of  our  labor  is  spent 
upon  those  least  able  or  least  likely  to  profit 
by  the  results. 

The  cynic  will  remark  that  our  perversity  is 
due  to  the  attitude  of  the  powers  that  be,  who, 
in  the  contemporary  college,  are  almost  as 
sensitive  to  the  merits  of  quantity  as  the 
** boosters"  of  a  Western  town.  The  cynic 
would  be  partly  right.  We  are  still  in  the 
pioneering  stage  in  the  college  world — or  think 
that  we  are — where  sheer  numbers  seem  nec- 
essary in  order  to  hold  down  the  investment. 

146 


THE  COLLEGES  AND  MEDIOCRITY 

And  yet  the  pressure  supposed  to  be  exerted 
in  order  to  keep  classes  large  is  so  much  less — 
at  least  in  colleges  of  a  high  rank — than  is 
popularly  supposed,  that  I  am  inclined  to  think 
this  motive  unimportant  in  the  problem. 

It  is  not  a  crude  desire  to  keep  the  college 
"big";  nor  is  it  weak  human  nature,  hesitating 
to  eliminate  a  nuisance  when  that  nuisance  is  a 
friendly,  fresh-spirited  boy;  it  is  the  American 
passion  for  democracy  that  makes  us  lavish  our 
energies  upon  the  multitude  of  the  mediocre. 
For  a  belief  that  the  right  to  an  education  is  as 
universal  as  freedom  is  ingrained  in  the  Amer- 
ican mind.  The  college  professor  may  never 
have  recognized  this  as  the  cause  of  his  perverse 
devotion  to  the  mediocre.  He  may  never  have 
said,  he  may  never  have  thought,  "If  the 
republic  is  to  be  saved  it  is  by  raising  the  average 
of  intelligence."  But  his  actions  prove  that 
somewhere  in  his  subconsciousness  this  belief 
is  stirring.  It  is  this  hidden  passion  that 
manifests  itself  in  the  attitude  I  have  called 
perverse. 

This    passion    for    democracy    is    the    most 

sincere  and  possibly  the  most  valuable  quality 

in    our    whole    educational    system.     When    I 
147 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

glimpse  its  subterranean  motives  I  know  why 
my  heart  is  sore  if  the  ninety-and-nine  average 
men  are  unmoved  by  my  teaching,  even  though 
the  hundredth  man  has  responded  beyond 
my  hopes.  But  when  I  calculate  its  effects 
I  realize  that  it  is  responsible  for  some  of  the 
difficulties  in  which  American  education  floun- 
ders. It  is  the  quintessence  of  a  noble  idealism; 
but  we  have  followed  it  blindly;  and  sometimes 
it  has  led  us  into  the  mire. 

Everywhere  but  in  so-called  graduate  work, 
and  in  some  measure  even  there,  this  desire 
to  do  something  for  every  one  has  made  us 
neglect  the  exceptional  man  and  actually  favor 
the  mediocre.  There  is  no  question,  I  think, 
as  to  the  fact,  and  a  comparison  of  the  best 
products  of  English  and  Continental  training- 
schools  with  our  own  graduates  will  bring  it 
home.  They  permit  fewer  men  to  call  them- 
selves educated;  but  these  men  are  more  highly 
trained,  more  efficient  intellectually,  than  ours. 
In  science,  in  scholarship,  as  in  literature,  we 
still  look  Eastward  for  leaders. 

In  the  past  our  deficiencies  were  due  to  in- 
ferior equipment  and  less  extensive  resources. 
But  now  we  can  offer  neither  poverty  nor  im- 

148 


THE  COLLEGES  AND  MEDIOCRITY 

maturity  as  an  excuse.  Our  failure  to  provide 
the  best  possible  education  for  the  best  men 
can  be  attributed  only  to  our  desire  to  give 
every  man  his  equal  chance,  a  desire  which, 
more  deeply  interpreted,  means  that  we  have 
preferred  universal  mediocrity  to  an  aristocracy 
of  brains  and  a  commonalty  of  ignorance.  We 
educate  a  class,  not  individuals.  We  boast  of 
the  type,  of  the  average  our  colleges  produce. 
In  my  own  university  one  hears  far  less  of 
Jonathan  Edwards,  of  Evarts,  of  Calhoun,  or  of 
Stedman  than  of  the  "Yale  man."  This  in- 
direct evidence,  I  think,  is  even  more  significant 
than  the  results  of  matching  Harvard  with 
Oxford  or  Columbia  with  Berlin. 

Are  we  wrong?  Am  I  absurd  when  I  feel 
that  my  class  must  come  forward  as  a  body — 
the  lazy  millionaire's  son,  the  earnest  child  of  an 
uncouth  immigrant,  the  able  inheritor  of  suf- 
ficient brains — must  come  forward,  all  of  them, 
or  the  year's  work  is  not  well  done?  I  do  not 
think  so — ^for  I  believe  in  the  American  ex- 
periment. I  believe  in  the  passion  for  democ- 
racy— even  when  misguided,  even  when  blind. 

But  it  is  blind.  That  is  the  chief  criticism 
one  has  to  offer.     The  French  of  the  Revolution 

149 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

were  so  afraid  of  aristocracy  that  in  the  new 
republic  they  reduced  all  titles  to  "citizen." 
We  have  been  so  afraid  of  slighting  the  democ- 
racy that  in  the  colleges  we  have  reduced  all 
education  to  an  average.  The  needless  folly 
of  limiting  ourselves  to  such  a  program  is 
manifest.  We  have  energy  enough  and  to 
spare,  and  money  to  make  the  mare  go  faster 
and  farther  than  any  one  has  yet  driven  her. 
It  is  perfectly  possible  to  give  signal  ability 
its  proper  opportunity  without  failing  in  our 
duty  to  the  multitudinous  mediocre.  This  is 
not  an  argument  for  aristocracy  in  education. 
It  is  common  sense.  For  we  need  leaders  in 
the  American  experiment  quite  as  much  as  a 
continuously  rising  democracy.  And  in  the  next 
stage  of  development  we  shall  need  them  more. 
The  establishment  of  "honor"  schools  and 
"honor"  courses  is  a  tardy  and  so  far  rather 
imperfect  recognition  of  this  fact.  I  have  no 
program  to  propose  for  their  development. 
Its  details  must  be  settled  in  the  colleges,  not 
in  an  essay.  But  when  we  see  that  our  admi- 
rable loyalty  to  the  democratic  ideal  has  held 
us  back  at  the  same  time  that  it  has  kept 
us  true  to  destiny,  we  shall  put  more  intelligence 

150 


THE   COLLEGES  AND  MEDIOCRITY 

into  our  reforms.  The  college  must  continue 
to  be  an  institution  for  the  increase  of  medioc- 
rity, for  mediocrity  is  infinitely  preferable  to 
ignorance;  but  it  must  also  provide  the  ex- 
ceptional man  with  the  training  by  which  he 
alone  can  profit.  Like  the  Yankee  contrivance 
which  can  be  used  for  both  ladder  and  chair, 
it  must  perform  both  the  functions  demanded 
of  it,  even  at  the  risk  of  being  less  than  best 
in  one  of  them. 

The  worst  fault,  however,  into  which  our 
age-long  service  of  mediocrity  has  led  us  is  a 
weak-kneed,  pusillanimous  deference  to  medioc- 
rity itself.  The  college  has  borrowed  the  vice 
from  every-day  American  life.  For  example, 
the  most  deadly  weapon  in  the  yellow  journal- 
ist's armory  is  the  term  "high-brow."  A 
politician  may  be  called  "grafter,"  "boss,"  or 
even  "muckraker,"  and  escape  unscratched; 
but  if  he  is  denounced  as  a  "high-brow,"  and  the 
label  sticks,  his  career  is  ended.  A  playwright 
or  a  novelist  may  be  written  down  as  "cheap," 
he  may  be  said  to  plagiarize,  he  may  be  shown 
to  be  vicious  or  unclean,  without  serious  damage 
to  his  reputation;  but  let  him  be  proved  a 
"high-brow"  and  the  public  will  fly  from  him 

151 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

as  if  he  were  a  book-agent.  Now  the  wide- 
spread American  belief  that  knowledge  makes 
a  man  impractical  is  responsible  for  some  of 
this  curious  odium;  but  far  more  is  due  to  our 
servile  deference  to  mediocrity.  The  weight  of 
public  opinion  is  usually  against  the  expert, 
the  specialist,  the  thinker,  the  exceptional  man 
in  general;  for  public  opinion,  whether  right 
or  wrong,  is  always  mediocre;  and  there  are 
few  among  us  who  do  not  in  this  respect  yield 
somehow,  somewhere,  to  public  opinion.  The 
doctor  distrusts  the  advanced  political  theorist, 
the  politician  distrusts  the  advanced  dramatist, 
the  dramatist  sneers  at  the  innovations  of  sci- 
ence. We  are  all  made  timid  by  the  enormous 
majorities  that  uphold  mediocrity. 

The  college  is  like  a  salt  pool  on  the  ocean 
shore,  where  young  sea- things  are  growing  in  the 
gentle  wash  of  waves  that  come  from  the  world 
without.  There  is  a  public  opinion  in  college 
that  is  as  like  the  public  opinion  without  as  a 
microcosm  can  be  to  a  macrocosm.  And  just 
as  the  public  opinion  without  favors  mediocrity 
in  everything  but  making  money,  so  this  public 
opinion  encourages  mediocrity  in  everything 
but  athletics  and  social  advance.    No  need  to 

152 


THE  COLLEGES  AND  MEDIOCRITY 

dwell  upon  this.  The  fact  is  better  known 
than  the  gradual  change  that  has  come  over 
college  ideals  in  the  last  decade,  until  now  the 
minority  in  favor  of  culture,  knowledge,  mental 
keenness,  and  other  attributes  of  a  high  civiliza- 
tion is  comfortably  large. 

But  the  majority  still  exists,  and  its  burden 
weighs  heavily.  It  is  curiously  difficult  for  a 
teacher  who  is  no  mental  machine,  but  human, 
to  estimate  at  his  true  intellectual  value  a  fine 
young  fellow  who  already  possesses  the  "push" 
and  the  "punch"  that  are  still  sufficient  for 
a  reasonable  financial  success  in  America.  It 
is  enormously  difficult  to  insist  upon  stand- 
ards of  intellectual  accomplishment  above  the 
mediocre  level  with  which  the  public  is  content. 
Let  the  graduate  be  deficient  in  some  category 
that  even  mediocrity  has  mastered — say,  spell- 
ing or  letter- writing  or  punctuation — and  opin- 
ion howls  him  down;  but  in  the  higher  depart- 
ments of  theoretical  knowledge  the  world  outside 
is  quite  content  with  a  fifty  or  sixty  per  cent, 
efficiency,  and  deprecates  more  as  an  accumula- 
tion of  material  not  readily  transmutable  into 
cash. 

All  this  the  teacher  feels,  and  as  his  class 

153 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

become  personalities  to  him,  he  inclines  further 
and  further  toward  their  own  opinion,  the  college 
world's  opinion,  everybody's  opinion,  of  what 
a  student  should  do  and  know.  Then,  at  the 
crisis,  the  insidious,  unrecognized  passion  for 
democracy,  the  subconscious  feeling  that  it  is 
his  duty  to  raise  this  dead-weight  as  much  as 
may  be  permitted  him,  enters  to  complicate 
the  situation.  He  begins  to  overestimate  me- 
diocrity, knowing  that  he  must  serve  it.  His 
pride  dictates,  "The  results,  all  things  con- 
sidered, are  not  so  bad."  He  blames  himself 
for  a  meticulous  idealism.  He  makes  the  fatal 
error  of  assenting  to  mediocrity,  and  thereby 
ends  his  career  as  an  agent  for  raising  it.  Or 
he  violently  reacts  against  the  service  required 
of  him,  antagonizes  his  class,  and  becomes 
equally  valueless,  except  for  graduate  work. 
Here  is  a  familiar  college  tragedy. 

It  is  easy  enough  to  fulminate  from  with- 
out against  the  "low  standards'*  of  the  collies. 
Try  to  raise  them  and  you  will  find  that  Amer- 
ica is  on  the  other  end  of  the  lever.  It  is  dif- 
ficult to  meet  such  a  situation  without  truckling 
to  mediocrity;  it  is  very  difficult  to  fight  the 
mediocre  while  loving  democracy. 


THE  COLLEGES  AND  MEDIOCRITY 

It  is  difficult,  but  not  impossible,  and  the 
difficulty  would  be  less  if  those  chiefly  con- 
cerned— the  faculty,  the  undergraduates,  aad 
the  parents — could  see  the  situation  for  wp.at 
it  is,  and,  so  far  as  weak  human  nature  per- 
mits, direct  themselves  accordingly. 

The  faculty,  unfortunately,  are  not  exempt 
from  the  circumstances  of  the  age  in  America. 
If  you  prick  a  college  professor  he  will  show 
mediocrity  as  frequently  as  his  fellow- Christian. 
But  he  has  this  advantage — his  profession  must 
bear  the  brunt  of  the  struggle  to  attain  that 
comfortable  average  of  intelligence  which  the 
American  experiment  demands.  His  profession 
must  also  sweat  and  toil  to  train  the  leaders 
without  which  that  experiment  must  fail.  If 
responsibility  breeds  strength,  then  he  cannot 
remain  mediocre.  But  it  is  not  of  his  occa- 
sional mediocrity  that  I  complain;  it  is  of  his 
frequent  and  unnecessary  lack  of  vision,  his 
failure  to  see  that  both  of  these  ends  must  be 
sought.  As  a  class,  the  teaching  profession  is 
most  reprehensible  for  the  first  of  the  two 
errors  of  democracy  that  I  have  discussed  in 
this  essay — the  failure  to  encourage  the  ex- 
ceptional man. 

155 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

Those  faculty  meetings  whose  rumbHngs 
echoed  in  our  undergraduate  world  present  to 
the  philosophic  mind  a  spectacle  of  earnest 
scholars  anguishing  through  precious  evening 
hours  over  Reilley's  deficiencies  in  history, 
or  the  hopeless  befuddlement  of  Jenkinson 
in  the  presence  of  untranslated  French.  The 
capable  undergraduate  who  is  doing  his  work, 
and  beginning  to  profit  by  his  education,  has 
little  place  in  their  deliberations  which,  to 
paraphrase  Dogberry,  seem  often  to  have  for 
text,  "If  a  man  can  learn,  let  him  alone  lest  he 
learn  more;  but  if  he  can  learn  nothing,  let 
him  be  taught."  And  yet  beneath  this  haze 
of  cross-purposes  there  lies,  as  I  have  tried  to 
show,  an  intuitive  perception  of  a  great  service. 
They  have  pledged  themselves,  these  scholars, 
to  the  democracy,  and  nobly,  if  sometimes 
blindly,  they  are  laboring  in  its  behalf.  When 
their  vision  clears  they  will  spend  not  more, 
perhaps,  but  certainly  as  much  energy  upon 
the  intellectually  predestined  as  upon  the  men- 
tally unregenerate  in  the  American  colleges. 

The  undergraduate  and  his  parents  are 
guilty  under  the  second  count  of  the  general 
indictment.     They  cater  to  mediocrity.    As  I 

156 


THE  COLLEGES  AND  MEDIOCRITY 

talk  to  the  loyal,  energetic  undergraduate  out- 
side of  the  class-room,  where  he  is  not  afraid 
to  be  himself,  and  as  I  meet  his  parents  in  the 
course  of  every-day  life,  I  am  convinced  that 
here  again  the  difficulty  is  quite  as  much  a 
defect  of  vision  as  the  pressure  of  unescapable 
circumstance.  If  the  undergraduate  could  see 
the  situation  as  it  is,  what  would  happen? 
If  he  could  see  what  the  time  spirit  sees,  that 
he  has  consented  to  be  part  of  the  dead-weight 
of  crude  Americanism,  to  be  raised  with  in- 
finite pains  to  an  intellectual  level  only  a  little 
higher,  where  he  may  view  the  world  only  a 
little  more  broadly,  with  but  a  trifle  more  of 
truth!  Would  he  be  content  with  his  part? 
I  doubt  it.  For  if  there  is  one  thing  experience 
in  an  American  university  teaches  it  is  this, 
that  the  undergraduate  (who,  after  all,  is  a 
picked  man,  not  the  average  of  his  race)  is  not 
so  mediocre  as  he  seems — is  not  nearly  so  me- 
diocre as  the  education  he  seems  to  desire. 

And  the  parents! — if  they  could  glimpse 
what  even  the  college  sees:  that  when  they 
send  us  their  children  with  injunctions  to  think 
well,  but  not  too  well,  they  are  bowing  down 
to  the  leaden  calf  of  mediocrity.     If  only  they 

157 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

could  realize  that  their  boys  are  held  back  by 
such  influence,  are  caught,  like  the  pilgrim 
with  his  burden  of  sin,  fast  in  the  sands  of  me- 
diocrity! If  they  could  know  that  the  college 
which  loves  their  sons  and  daughters  fears 
them  often  enough,  as  counterweights  in  the 
slow  uplift  to  which  it  is  pledged!  If  they  saw 
all  this,  would  they  be  content  with  their  part 
in  American  education?  More  than  one  en- 
couraging experience  makes  me  sure  of  the 
response. 

And  we  need  their  aid — the  aid  of  the  parents 
and  the  aid  of  the  undergraduates;  for,  until 
democracy  reaches  the  level  of  its  opportunities, 
or  is  proved  a  failure,  the  problem  of  medioc- 
rity will  continue  to  exist.  We  cannot  solve  it 
by  educating  the  best  men  only.  We  cannot 
solve  it  by  slighting  the  able.  We  cannot  es- 
cape it  by  pretending  that  mediocrity  is  good 
enough.  We  must  bear  its  burden.  But  as  we 
push  on  toward  a  distant  and  uncertain  victory 
a  clearer  sight  of  the  path  we  have  chosen 
would  save  us  from  stumbling  blindly  and 
stupidly  beneath  the  weight. 


CURRENT  LITERATURE  AND 
THE  COLLEGES 

NOT  long  ago  I  saw  a  college  professor  drop 
into  a  chair  at  his  club,  glance  over  the 
table  of  contents  of  a  well-known  periodical,  and 
fling  it  down  in  disgust. 

*'I  can't  read  the  magazines,'*  he  snorted. 
"What  is  the  matter  with  American  literature.'*" 

In  the  trolley  that  night  I  sat  next  to  a  busi- 
ness man  who  was  studying  the  pictures  of  the 
same  monthly.  "Do  you  read  that  magazine?" 
I  asked. 

"Part  of  it,"  he  said,  indifferently;  "I  sup- 
pose all  of  it  is  trash." 

I  cannot  see  that  such  critics  have  a  right 
to  ask.  What  is  the  matter  with  American 
literature?  Superciliousness  and  indifference 
were  never  friends  to  criticism  or  to  authors? 
The  worst  way  to  improve  a  national  literature  is 
not  to  read  it;  and  the  next  is  to  read  it  badly. 

II  169 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

I  bought  the  magazine,  and  read  it,  all  but 
the  advertisements.  It  was  not  great  literature 
— some  of  it  was  not  even  good  literature — 
but  it  was  certainly  not  "trash."  A  task  in 
research  once  led  me  to  read  with  thoroughness 
the  magazines  of  the  mid-nineteenth  century, 
when  English  literature  was,  so  the  critics  say, 
greater  than  now.  They  were  not  so  good  as 
this  modern  periodical — they  were  not  nearly 
so  good  in  average  of  content,  even  though  here 
and  there  a  poem  or  a  story  or  an  essay  since 
become  famous  lightened  the  toil  of  reading. 
My  professor,  if  he  had  lived  in  the  mid- 
century,  would  never  have  grappled  with  the 
diffuse,  sentimental  writing  that  filled  so  many 
pages.  He  would  have  stopped  with  the  table 
of  contents,  and  missed  perhaps  a  chapter 
of  Vanity  Fair,  a  sonnet  of  Longfellow's,  a  story 
by  Poe,  or  an  instalment  of  T/ie  Autocrat  of  the 
Breakfast  Table.  And  my  Philistine  business 
man  would  infallibly  have  skipped  these  good 
things,  read  the  bad,  and  proclaimed  that  most 
modern  stuff  was  trash. 

What  is  it  that  makes  us  contemptuous 
when  we  come  to  current  literature,  and  espe- 
cially to   current  American   literature?    Is  it 


CURRENT  LITERATURE  AND  COLLEGES 

modesty?  I  doubt  it.  Is  it  hypocrisy?  Do 
we  sneer  at  our  reading  (for  most  of  us  do  read 
the  magazines,  and  with  some  interest,  too) 
lest  some  learned  critic  or  scornful  foreigner  will 
laugh  at  our  taste?  Or  is  it  timidity  because 
we  lack  confidence  to  discriminate  between 
the  good  and  the  bad  in  current  publications? 
Lowell  said  that  there  would  never  be  an 
American  literature  until  there  was  an  Amer- 
ican criticism.  If  he  meant  that  there  must 
be  great  critics  before  there  are  great  writers, 
the  history  of  many  literary  periods  is  against 
him.  But  it  is  certain  that  until  we  are  ready 
to  stand  by  our  books  and  periodicals — to  be 
honest  in  our  praise  and  blame,  and  intelligent 
in  our  discrimination — ^American  literature,  in 
spite  of  an  occasional  achievement  of  distinc- 
tion, must,  as  a  whole,  remain  second-rate. 

To  sneer  at  contemporary  literature,  whether 
native  or  foreign,  because  most  of  it  must  dis- 
appear in  the  test  and  trial  of  time,  is  more  than 
ridiculous — it  is  dangerous.  Of  the  hundred 
short  stories  of  the  month,  ninety  poor  ones  are 
less  important  than  a  single  paragraph  from 
Fielding  or  Thackeray,  and  yet  the  ten  remain- 
ing may  mean  more  to  us  than  all  but  the  best 

161 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

works  of  earlier  centuries.  We  are  partners 
in  the  literary  speculations  of  our  own  age — 
mere  investors  in  the  established  enterprises 
of  earlier  periods.  In  the  works  of  our  best 
fictionists  the  speech  is  our  speech,  the  mode 
of  thought  our  mode,  the  clothes,  the  streets, 
the  events,  the  philosophy,  our  clothes,  our 
streets,  our  remembered  history,  our  philosophy. 
If  it  is  to  the  so-called  "classics"  that  we  must 
go  for  eternal  human  nature  and  perfection  of  ex- 
pression tried  and  sure,  it  is  in  the  "newest 
books,"  in  the  newspaper  on  its  way  from  the 
press  to  the  kindling-box,  in  the  supposedly 
ephemeral  magazine,  that  we  must  seek  a  record 
of  ourselves  as  others  see  us,  and  find  the  self-ex- 
pression of  our  age.  If  literature  is  to  be  taken 
seriously  at  all,  current  literature  is  in  some 
respects  the  most  serious  part  of  it — even  the 
photo-play,  even  the  comic  supplement.  It  is 
like  the  breakers  on  the  shore-front:  the  ocean 
lies  behind,  but  it  is  in  them  that  motion, 
energy,  and  life  are  concentrated  and  made 
manifest.  Few  take  seriously  our  current 
literature,  and  that  is  why  the  bilious  query 
of  the  supercilious  and  the  indifferent,  "  What  is 
the  matter  with  American  literature?"    is  so 

162 


CURRENT  LITERATURE  AND  COLLEGES 

irritating.  It  is  because  I,  for  one,  do  take 
it  with  enormous  seriousness  that  I  dare  to 
ask  the  question  myself. 

That  there  really  is  something  wrong — at 
least  with  current  American  writing — ^the  ev- 
idence proves  only  too  readily.  A  comparison 
of  American  stories,  articles,  plays,  poetry, 
with  the  product  of  Europe  need  not  inspire 
a  native  reader  with  the  despair  that  English 
critics  profess  to  feel  for  us.  Our  writers  are 
the  cleverest  in  the  world,  barring  only  the 
French;  and,  in  their  special  field  of  fiction  and 
journalism,  the  most  skilful  and  most  vigorous. 
They  have  energy,  versatility,  promise,  and 
for  the  most  part  are  free  from  the  marks  of 
decadence  visible  in  English  paradox  and  French 
morbidity.  But  depth,  truth,  sincerity,  are 
not  so  evident;  nor  is  the  craftsmanship  which 
completes  a  perfect  work.  The  best  foreign 
plays  are  better  made  than  our  best  native 
drama.  The  best  English  fiction  strikes  deeper, 
means  more,  is  truer,  than  what  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  put  forward  as  our  most  representative 
work,  although  one  must  except  three  or  four 
of  our  chief  writers  if  the  scale  is  to  tip  against 
us.     English   poetry,   on   the   whole,   is   more 

163 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

vital,  more  beautiful,  more  perfect  than  ours. 
And  the  cultivated  American  reader  not  only 
recognizes  these  diflferences,  he  exaggerates 
them.  The  journalistic  humor  that  he  laughs 
at  he  believes  to  be  cheap,  even  when  it  is  not 
— unless,  like  Mark  Twain's,  it  comes  in  book 
form  with  its  prestige  stamped  on  the  cover. 
Short  stories  more  clever  than  anything  being 
written  in  England  he  delights  in,  but  does 
not  wholly  admire.  Plays  that  hold  his  in- 
terest he  damns  with  a  "good  melodrama,  I 
suppose,**  at  the  end;  and  he  calls  the  best 
sellers  "virile,**  "wholesome,**  "stirring,**  or 
"sweet,**  without  supposing  for  an  instant  that 
they  are  true.  Current  literature  may  tickle 
the  current  American  reader,  and  it  often  plays 
successfully  upon  his  emotions  and  his  senti- 
ment; but  like  current  religion,  it  seldom  stirs 
him  to  faith.  Its  roots  are  not  about  his  mind 
and  his  heart. 

There  are  two  extremes,  both  well-marked, 
in  American  literature — the  strenuous  and  the 
delicate.  Between  them  is  to  be  found  that 
writing  of  the  first  order  which,  in  despite  of 
critical  sneerers,  we  have  for  a  century  been 
producing,  and  the  mass  of  featureless  publica- 


CURRENT  LITERATURE  AND  COLLEGES^ 

tion  which  has  neither  form,  content,  nor 
significance.  The  bulk  of  our  circulating  li- 
brary and  news-stand  literature  belongs  to  the 
first  extreme — that  which  I  have  called  the 
"strenuous"  order.  It  is  loud-voiced,  ag- 
gressive, marvelously  lush  in  its  growth,  and 
loved  of  the  multitude.  In  articles  and  edi- 
torials it  affects  the  positive  and  the  pictu- 
resque. It  deals  in  paragraphs  of  three  lines' 
length;  and  its  subject-matter,  while  interest- 
ing, has  little  accuracy  and  a  minimum  of 
thoughtfulness.  In  fiction,  it  acquires  such 
head-lines  as  "A  Virile  American  Conquers  the 
Love  of  a  Beautiful  Balkan  Princess,  and  Wins 
Her  by  a  Method  which  must  be  Read  to  be 
Appreciated."  Its  stories  are  built  like  can- 
tilever bridges,  and  their  construction  is  quite 
as  evident.  The  characters  are  like  the  clothes 
they  wear  in  the  illustrations — ready-made; 
and  the  advertising  pages,  devoted  to  the  ideal 
American  as  he  dresses  in  New  York,  present 
them  quite  as  fittingly  as  the  picture  in  color  on 
the  cover.  Sometimes  the  theme  is  adventure, 
in  which  case  the  pace  is  rapid  beyond  hope 
of  realization  in  this  jaded  world;  sometimes 
it  is  business,  and  then  we  learn  how  luridly 

165 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

romantic  are  the  lives  of  our  bankers  and 
brokers;  sometimes  it  is  pathos  —  then  the 
tears  are  never  far  from  the  surface,  and  the 
honest  American  heart,  be  it  never  so  prac- 
tical, is  touched,  or  your  money  back;  some- 
times it  is  humor,  and  this  time,  as  the  quo- 
tation from  the  press  notice  describes  it,  *'you 
roll  in  excruciating  delight  upon  the  library 
rug,  and  only  save  yourself  by  herculean  self- 
control  from  falling  into  the  fireplace." 

I  do  not  intend  to  be  sarcastic.  On  the 
contrary,  one  must  admire  the  abounding 
vitality  of  this  literature  of  the  democracy. 
It  may  not  be  "virile,"  but  it  certainly  is 
vigorous.  It  may  not  be  "literary,"  but  what 
remains  when  you  skip  the  "dramatic  open- 
ings," the  "happy  endings,"  with  "uplifts," 
the  mere  adventures,  and  the  conventional 
characterizations — what  is  left  after  this  con- 
tains much  real  literature,  in  which  American 
conditions  are  mirrored  with  humor  and  with 
genuineness,  and  with  a  shrewdness  that 
almost  makes  up  for  depth.  The  magazine 
that  advertises,  "This  is  the  best  number  ever 
published  in  America,"  may  be  as  disappoint- 
ing as  certain  "boosted"  towns  of  the  West, 

166 


CURRENT  LITERATURE  AND   COLLEGES 

but  it  is  likely  to  contain  passages  that  really 
do  depict  America;  and  this  is  something  that 
the  merely  "literary"  may  never  accomplish. 

In  fact,  the  strenuous,  extravagant,  aggress- 
ive school  of  American  literature — the  popular 
school — is  as  full  of  strength  and  confidence  and 
promise  for  the  future  as  American  business. 
But  it  is  far  cruder  than  American  business. 
It  has  less  brains  behind  it.  It  is  a  plant  that 
runs  to  vigorous  stems  and  over-abundant 
leaves.  It  is  lush  in  growth  and  not  highly 
productive  of  valuable  fruit,  because  as  yet  it 
is  deficient  in  roots. 

The  strenuous  school  is  certainly  preferable, 
however,  to  the  other  extreme — the  delicate, 
scented  variety  of  writing,  which,  though  not 
hardy  in  our  practical  America,  is  replanted 
annually  in  astonishing  abundance.  This  is  a 
flower  of  art  that  the  multitude  who  make 
popularity  are  ignorant  of,  and  yet  it,  too, 
is  typically  American.  In  occasional  con- 
tributions to  the  general  magazines,  in  a  hun- 
dred "paid-for-by-the-author"  books,  and  in 
thousands  of  essays,  stories,  and  poems  read 
before  clubs  or  printed  for  the  few,  there  is  a 
gentle,  highly  personal,  highly  polished  style  of 
167 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

composition  which,  if  not  literature,  is  cer- 
tainly literary.  People  with  no  story  to  tell 
write  it  excellently  and  call  it  art;  people 
with  nothing  to  say  polish  their  style  and  call 
it  literature.  As  if  by  some  survival  of  the 
curse  of  Babel,  careful  writing,  discrimination 
in  words,  restraint,  grace,  beauty — all  that 
goes  to  make  a  style — have  become  associated 
in  America  with  the  privately  printed  or  the 
sparingly  read. 

It  would  be  invidious  and  merely  con- 
fusing to  single  out  examples.  The  kind  of 
writing  I  have  in  mind  is  not  restricted  to  in- 
dividuals, nor  to  given  essays  or  stories.  It  is 
a  tendency  rather  than  a  method,  and  shows 
its  empty,  graceful  head  as  unmistakably  when 
the  commercial  writer  turns  the  spot-light  upon 
his  purple  patches,  or  breathes  soft  sentiment, 
as  in  the  labored  mannerisms  of  the  cultured 
dilettante.  Nevertheless,  there  is  an  astonish- 
ing production  of  American  work  whose  only 
recommendation  is  its  literary  form,  though 
it  is  not  literature  in  substance.  In  poetry, 
especially,  the  vice  is  prevalent;  in  truth,  there 
seem  to  be  as  many  poets  as  there  are  readers 

of  new  poetry;   and  a  discouraging  percentage 
168 


CURRENT  LITERATURE  AND  COLLEGES 

of  their  verse  is  mere  graceful  flower  and  leaf. 
The  scribbling-iteh,  of  course,  is  common  to 
all  nations;  but  the  depressing  factor  here  is 
that  so  much  of  what  is  really  well  written, 
artistically  written,  so  much  of  the  thoroughly 
civilized  writing  in  our  current  literature,  is 
of  this  fragile  order;  so  much  of  what  has  real 
juice  in  it,  real  promise — afresh  thought,  keen 
observation,  cogent  truth — ^is  slipshod,  vulgar, 
ugly,  or  warped  by  sensationalism  and  the 
fear  of  reahty  into  a  sentimental  or  exaggerated 
imitation  of  what  the  public  is  supposed  to 
consider  life.  The  one  school  runs  to  lush  and 
wasteful  growth,  because  it  sends  no  roots 
down  into  the  heart  of  America.  The  other, 
for  all  its  grace  and  perfect  form,  is  not  hardy, 
is  not  at  home  among  us,  because  it,  too,  is 
not  well  rooted  in  our  soil. 

No  one  will  deny  that  we  lose  by  this;  those 
least  who  know  and  admire  the  work  of  the 
many  American  writers  who,  in  the  face  of 
discouraging  conditions,  are  earning  more  dis- 
criminating praise  than  has  yet  been  given 
them.  Only  the  supercilious  can  fail  to  regret 
the  vigorous  imagination  running  waste  in  our 
"popular"  productions — so  little  of  it  directed 

169 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

to  any  end  that  may  serve  art  and  truth.  Only 
the  indifferent  can  see  without  regret  that  the 
study  of  perfection  which  leads  to  art  is  be- 
stowed chiefly  upon  subjects  that  contain  little 
promise  and  no  hearty  life.  Let  us  take  from 
the  comparison  the  few  writers  of  whom  we 
may  well  boast;  let  us  confine  ourselves  to  pure 
literature;  and  then  admit  that  in  the  drama, 
in  fiction,  and  in  poetry  we  are  just  neither  to 
our  talents,  to  our  needs,  nor  to  our  desires 
in  literature. 

Excuses  are  as  plentiful  as  blackberries — 
and,  to  a  critic  with  some  national  pride,  as 
sour.  The  commonest  of  them  take  the  form 
of  that  ogre  which  lurks  in  all  the  dreams  of 
culture — commercialism.  It  is  a  fallacy.  Venice 
was  commercial  and  had  Giorgione  and  Titian. 
The  Florence  of  Boccaccio  was  the  center  of 
fourteenth-century  commercialism.  The  Hol- 
land of  Rembrandt  was  commercial  to  the  core. 
There  is  sure  to  be  a  vast  output  of  low-grade 
literary  ware  when,  as  with  us,  the  vast  majority 
of  readers  are  money-makers  necessarily  intent 
on  their  gains,  and  deprived  of  the  leisure 
necessary  to  form  a  taste;  exactly  as  there  is 

an  enormous  production  of  the  common  con- 
no 


CURRENT  LITERATURE  AND  COLLEGES 

veniences  of  life — shoes,  newspapers,  collars, 
and  phonographs.  But  this  is  no  necessary 
deterrent  to  high-grade  work.  The  more  money 
the  more  chance  for  the  artist  with  high  ideals 
to  live.  Surely  our  industrial  development 
since  the  Civil  War  has  brought  us  to  the  level 
of  old  New  England  of  seventy  years  ago,  when 
the  exploitation  of  the  seaboard  states  had 
ended  in  an  accumulation  of  wealth,  and  a  free- 
ing of  time  and  energy  for  our  one  great  literary 
period.  Commercialism  may  be  a  proffered 
excuse,  but  it  certainly  is  not  a  necessary  cause 
of  our  mediocrity  in  literature. 

America  is  too  heterogeneous,  too  shifting, 
for  mature  literature,  say  others;  it  is  so  various 
in  blood,  so  transitional  in  its  civilization,  as  to 
offer  few  subjects  for  finished  work.  This  is 
the  critic's  excuse.  The  thousands  of  writers 
who  are  satisfying  the  growing  clamor  for 
"something  to  read"  do  not  present  it.  They 
are  not  troubled  by  lack  of  subjects,  nor  are 
they  confused  by  the  complexity  and  move- 
ment of  our  national  life.  It  is  true  that  they 
do  not  seem  to  get  to  the  heart  of  this  life;  and 
it  may  be  that  they  rush  in  where  the  wiser  and 
less  vigorous  fear  to  tread.    But  what  arrant 

171 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

nonsense  it  would  be  to  hold  ofif  until  New 
York  and  Chicago  and  the  Pacific  coast  are 
"finished" — as  an  Englishwoman  put  it,  assert- 
ing that  they  would  be  worth  looking  at  when 
that  time  came.  The  scientist  nowadays  does 
not  wait  for  his  specimen  to  be  full  grown  or 
dead  before  he  begins  his  examination.  Nor 
should  we.  There  is  no  greater  lack  of  homoge- 
neity among  races  here  than  among  classes  in 
Germany.  There  is  as  much  significance  in 
our  mental  and  material  development  as  in 
English  pessimism  or  Russian  melancholy. 
I  admit  the  diflSculty  of  making  literature  from 
towns  that  change  their  populations  as  they 
change  their  pavements,  and  a  country  still 
largely  unassimilated.  But  if  we  lose  one  way, 
we  gain  another.  Forests  and  mountain  wilder- 
nesses, emigration  and  immigration,  the  clash 
of  racial  habits  and  ideals  in  an  amalgamating 
society;  industrial,  moral,  social  transforma- 
tion— these  are  assuredly  subjects  for  literature; 
and  that  they  challenge  originality  and  the 
interpretative  imagination  does  not  make  them 
less  interesting.  And  yet  American  literature 
does  not  live  up  to  its  opportunities.  It  is 
not  so  good  as  American  machinery.     And  the 

172 


CURRENT  LITERATURE  AND  COLLEGES 

trouble  is  neither  commercialism  nor  a  dearth 
of  subjects;  it  is  a  lack  of  proper  soil.  It 
is  the  fault  of  the  soil  that  oui"  novels,  plays, 
poetry,  articles — unrefined  and  over-refined — 
lack  the  roots  which  would  make  them  better 
literature. 

The  soil  from  which  good  books  grow  is 
intelligence.  Our  current  writing  is  clever, 
it  is  shrewd,  and  it  is  not  wanting  in  imagina- 
tion; but,  with  due  and  grateful  exception,  it 
comes  short  in  the  meditated  experience  and 
thoughtful  observation  that  spring  from  in- 
telligence. Its  art  is  less  bracing,  less  vital, 
than  the  best  in  our  lives.  Galsworthy,  Wells, 
and  Bennett  are  better  novelists  than  any 
group  of  Americans;  Shaw,  Synge,  and  Barrie 
are  better  dramatists;  Masefield  and  William 
Watson  are  better  poets — not,  I  think,  because 
they  have  more  brains,  more  art,  more  imagina- 
tion, but  because  they  use  more.  They  strike 
deeper,  perhaps  because  it  is  easier  to  do  so 
in  old  soil,  but  also  because  deeper  striking 
is  required  of  them. 

The  deficiency,  however,  is  not,  I  believe, 
primarily  with  the  writers.  By  all  the  laws 
of  probability,  we  should  have  more  than  our 

173 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE   FATHERS 

share  of  literary  genius.  The  American  has 
shown  himself  more  fertile  in  literary  talent 
than  in  any  other  of  the  arts;  and,  furthermore, 
wave  after  wave  of  restless  intellect  has  moved 
with  successive  immigrations  across  the  sea 
to  us.  One  of  the  great  Welsh  poets,  says 
George  Borrow,  died  in  New  Brunswick  in 
North  America.  If  the  soil  had  been  right, 
Henry  James,  Whistler,  Sargent — to  look  at  the 
matter  differently — would  have  flourished  here. 
If  the  soil  were  right,  there  would  be  genius 
to  grow  here. 

What  we  chiefly  lack  is  intelligent  readers. 
Good  readers  make  good  soil.  No  actor  can 
act  his  best  to  a  cold  audience  or  an  empty 
house.  Nor  can  a  writer  write  his  best  when 
there  are  none  or  few  who  will  hear  him.  It  is 
true  that  there  have  been  independent  geniuses, 
such  as  Browning  and  Shelley,  who  seem  to 
have  defied  the  neglect  of  the  reader.  If  we 
could  call  forth  such  men,  might  we  not  make 
an  American  literature,  regardless  of  what 
America  wants?  Unfortunately,  rare  spirits 
like  theirs  do  not  come  at  call;  and  even  they 
are  not  entirely  independent  of  the  circum- 
stances in   which   they  must   write.    Shelley, 

174 


CURRENT  LITERATURE  AND  COLLEGES 

it  is  true,  did  his  best  work  for  an  audience 
that  was  few  as  well  as  fit;  but  then  his  best 
work  is  the  purest  of  lyric  poetry,  the  most 
personal  form  of  literature,  the  least  dependent 
upon  a  circle  of  readers.  As  for  Browning,  his 
isolation  was  a  prime  cause  of  his  obscurity 
when,  as  so  often,  he  was  needlessly  obscure. 
Great  writers  do  not  come  ready-made.  Good 
readers  help  to  make  them. 

We  are  the  greatest  readers  among  the  na- 
tions. Everybody  in  America  reads — from  the 
messenger-boy  to  the  corporation  president.  It 
never  was  so  easy  to  read  as  now  in  America. 
A  journey  is  measured  by  discarded  news- 
papers and  magazines.  Fifteen  minutes  on  a 
trolley-car  without  something  to  read  has 
become  a  horror.  We  read  so  much  that  the 
publishers,  who  do  not  expect  us  to  think  of 
what  we  are  reading,  crowd  their  books  and 
magazines  with  illustrations  in  order  to  save 
us  from  embarrassment.  This  hunger  and 
thirst  for  the  printed  page  has  resulted  in  a 
flood  of  writing  that  is  good,  but  not  too  good; 
clever,  but  not  too  witty;  emphatic,  but  not 
too  serious,  lest  the  unintelligent  reader  be 
confused,   lest   the   intelligent  reader  have  to 

12  175 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

waste  his  reading-time  in  thinking.  A  year 
of  such  indiscriminate  perusing,  and  a  man  of 
good  natural  taste  will  swallow  anything  rather 
than  be  left  without  something  to  read.  And 
we  have  been  doing  it  for  a  generation! 

Hence  it  has  come  about  that,  while  we  are 
the  greatest  readers  in  the  world,  we  are  also 
the  worst.  We  read  too  much  to  read  intel- 
ligently. We  are  bad  readers,  some  of  us, 
because,  like  Benedick,  we  have  "a  contemptible 
spirit"  for  the  books  we  spend  our  time  over; 
but  most  of  us  because,  if  we  have  intelligence, 
we  fail  to  use  it  when  we  read.  If  as  great  an 
exercise  of  sheer  brain  power  were  demanded 
from  our  novelists  and  our  playwrights  as  from 
our  engineers,  superintendents,  architects,  and 
lawyers,  a  real  literature  would  follow.  But 
we  cannot  stop  reading  long  enough  to  make 
such  a  demand.  We  have  no  time  for  a  great 
creative  literature.  "People  want  to  be  made 
happy  by  their  novels.  They  don't  care  about 
truth."  "Any  old  stuff  in  a  play  will  please 
the  public,  if  there  are  laughs  enough."  So 
long  as  this  can  be  said  of  the  intelligent, 
educated  men  and  women  who  determine  true 

popularity,  good  writing  in  America  wiU  come 
i7e 


CURRENT  LITERATURE  AND  COLLEGES 

only  by  accident.  We  are  bad  readers;  and 
that  is  what  is  the  matter  with  American 
literature. 

I  do  not  mean  to  excuse  either  author  or 
publisher.  The  author — so  many  think — ^un- 
derestimates the  quality  of  his  audience.  Like 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  he  does  not  dare  to  be 
as  funny  as  he  can.  Often  he  is  unwilling, 
often  unable  to  pass  the  mark  of  "good  enough." 
The  publisher  is  certainly  over-timorous,  and 
much  prefers  the  rear  to  the  van  of  progressing 
taste.  Nevertheless,  the  root  of  the  diflSculty 
lies  elsewhere.  Supply  in  literature  may  not 
be  created,  but  it  is  inevitably  conditioned,  by 
demand. 

In  the  past  a  variety  of  circumstances,  social 
and  economic  rather  than  intellectual,  have 
made  the  American  voracious  and  superficial 
in  his  reading.  And  this  is  true  to-day,  with 
the  addition  that  France,  England,  and  Ger- 
many are  threatened  by  the  same  evil.  There 
is  only  one  remedy — education.  How  else 
can  you  prepare  for  intelligence?  Education 
in  the  broadest  sense  makes  a  good  reader. 
In  one  of  its  departments — knowledge  of  life, 
shrewdness,  common  sense — we  Americans  are 

177 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

abundantly  competent  to  read.  It  seems  that 
in  another  department — ^the  will  to  think,  to 
interpret,  to  appreciate — we  lag  behind.  Our 
colleges  are  blamed  for  their  failure  to  turn  out 
the  authors  of  a  great  American  literature. 
The  charge  is  unjust,  for  not  the  most  Utopian 
of  universities  could  produce  a  great  literature 
before  it  was  wanted.  Let  them  be  blamed 
rather  for  their  failure  to  produce  good  readers. 
Great  writers  they  can,  at  best,  train  and  en- 
courage.   Good  readers  they  can  make. 

In  our  society  it  is  the  college  graduates 
who  must  make  the  soil  for  literature.  Thanks 
to  sheer  numbers,  they  will  form,  in  the  gen- 
eration now  under  way,  the  majority  of  those 
who  by  competence  or  opportunity  become 
readers  of  good  writing;  they  will  determine 
the  policy  of  the  better  newspapers,  the  quality 
of  the  best  magazines,  the  success  of  most  books 
worthy  of  consideration.  Are  tliey  reading 
better  books  than  men  and  women  who  have 
never  been  to  college?  Are  they  asking  that 
their  fiction  shall  be  truer,  their  plays  more 
dramatic,  their  wit  wittier,  their  articles  more 
intelligent,  than  all  that  is  purveyed  for  those 
without  a  degree?  In  some  measure,  yes,  espe- 

178 


CURRENT  LITERATURE  AND  COLLEGES 

cially  among  the  women;  in  the  proper  measure, 
emphatically  no.  And  the  reason  is  that  the 
college  graduate  was  too  busy  with  other 
things  to  acquire  intellectual  interests  in  college. 
The  undergraduate  of  to-day  is  certainly  pos- 
sessed of  a  reasonable  amount  of  intelligence; 
the  criticism  most  justly  made  is  that  in  in- 
tellectual matters  he  often  fails  to  use  it.  It 
is  easy  to  present  him  with  information,  and 
get  it — not  seriously  damaged — back  again. 
It  is  not  difficult  to  make  him  comprehend 
theories,  developments,  conclusions,  ideas.  But 
it  is  hard  to  make  him  think.  He  will  spend 
enormous  sums  on  tutoring;  he  will  memorize 
whole  pages;  sometimes  he  will  even  forego 
his  degree,  rather  than  think.  And  as  good 
reading  demands  a  certain  amount  of  thinking 
as  a  prime  requisite,  his  books  suffer  in  propor- 
tion to  the  laziness  of  his  mind.  If  he  enters 
business  in  after  life,  this  defect  in  thoroughness 
is  remedied  by  a  stern  necessity,  and  what 
intelligence  has  accrued  to  him  he  rapidly  puts 
to  work  at  full  efficiency.  In  preparation 
for  law  and  the  professions  generally,  he  passes 
through  a  period  of  higher  training  when  think- 
ing is  forced  upon  him.     But  when  it  comes  to 

179 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

reading  for  pleasure,  there  is  no  such  compul- 
sion. If  he  was  lazy-minded  in  studying  in  col- 
lege, he  will  be  lazier  in  reading  afterward.  If 
he  was  content  with  a  sixty-per-cent.  eflBiciency, 
he  will  scarcely  seek  a  higher  ratio  of  appre- 
ciation when  there  is  only  his  own  pleasure  to 
consult.  And  how  can  a  considerable  literature 
— how  can  a  really  first-rate  newspaper — ^be  run 
for  a  man  who  does  not  care  to  comprehend 
more  than,  say,  sixty  per  cent. ! 

It  is  not  a  duty  I  am  urging.  I  suppose 
that  we  have  a  moral  obligation  to  become 
better  readers,  but  such  an  argument  is  quite 
unnecessary.  If,  crossing  the  hotel  corridor 
to  the  man  who  is  reading  a  novelized  photo- 
play to  rest  his  mind,  I  should  say,  "Dear  sir, 
ought  you  not  to  be  reading  good  literature?" 
I  should  expect  the  retort  that  Francis  Thomp- 
son made  upon  the  shoemaker  who  asked  if 
he  were  saved.  I  have  neither  the  right  nor 
the  desire  to  put  such  a  question.  I  am  more 
concerned  with  the  pleasure  and  inspiration 
that  the  man  in  the  hotel  corridor,  and  his 
hundred  thousand  companions,  are  losing. 
What  stories  the  really  able  American  authors 
might  write  for  him,  if  he  were  suflBciently 

180 


CURRENT  LITERATURE  AND  COLLEGES 

interested  in  life  to  read  them!  What  plays 
they  would  produce,  if  he  would  take  the  trou- 
ble to  discriminate  between  drama  and  melo- 
drama; between  sentiment  and  sentimentality; 
between  wit  and  horseplay!  What  essays  they 
would  compose  if  they  believed  he  could  be 
interested  by  thought!  If  he  would  but  spend 
upon  current  literature  the  loose  change  of  his 
intellectual  efforts,  America  might  see  the 
beginnings  of  a  literary  boom  that  even  a 
California  real-estate  man  would  treat  with 
respect. 

And,  I  repeat,  I  do  not  know  where  this  is 
to  begin  if  not  in  the  colleges — unless,  indeed, 
it  is  to  begin  in  the  schools  and  the  homes  that 
send  us  an  undergraduate  already  predisposed 
to  regard  matter  as  more  important  than  mind. 
Every  modern  nation  has  depended  upon  its 
schools  and  universities — ^not,  it  is  true,  to 
create  literature,  for  genius  has  never  required 
a  degree,  but  to  spread  that  intelligence,  and 
still  more  that  interest  in  intelligence,  by  whose 
warmth  good  books  ripen  into  literature.  The 
closer  one  looks  at  apparent  exceptions — ^Eliza- 
bethan England,  Italy  of  the  Renaissance, 
Russia  of   the  nineteenth  century — the  more 

181 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

clearly  one  sees  that  they  are  not  exceptions, 
but  merely  confirm  the  rule.  We  shall  get  a 
distinctive  literature  when  we  are  willing  to 
appreciate  one.  We  shall  be  willing  and  able 
to  appreciate  one  when  our  education  arouses 
intellectual  interests  as  well  as  trains  character 
and  disciplines  the  mind.  And  this  will  happen 
when,  among  other  things,  boys  and  girls  are 
sent  to  college  to  become  inteUigent. 

I  shall  probably  be  scoffed  at  by  the  pro- 
fessional writer  who  has  learned  his  trade  in 
the  school  of  experience,  and  condemned  by  the 
esthete  who  is  more  interested  in  culture  than 
in  life.  The  one  will  laugh  at  the  idea  that 
upon  education  can  depend  so  unacademic  a 
thing  as  creative  literature.  The  other  is  too 
contemptuous  of  the  masses  to  believe  that  our 
artistic  welfare  is  bound  up  with  theirs.  But 
the  facts  are  against  them.  The  lack  of  art 
which  foreign  critics  urge  against  our  profes- 
sional literature  is  due,  in  part  at  least,  to  the 
lack  of  an  audience  that  will  demand  it.  The 
lack  of  vitality  which  is  evident  in  our  merely 
literary  compositions  is  the  result  of  writing 
for  the  sake  of  writing,  in  despite  of  those  who 
will  not  read.    No  author  is  independent  of 

I8« 


CURRENT  LITERATURE  AND  COLLEGES 

his  readers.  He  can  distance  them,  but  he 
cannot  escape  their  influence.  The  novelist  or 
dramatist  who  is  urged  to  disregard  popularity 
is  quite  right  if  he  hesitates,  and  most  excusable 
if,  in  making  the  attempt,  he  falters  or  fails. 
I  have  no  formula  for  genius.  But  when  we 
have  good  readers,  we  shall  get  that  American 
literature  of  which  now  we  have  no  less  and 
no  more  than  we  deserve. 


WRITING  ENGLISH 

DEEDS,  not  words,"  is  a  platitude — a  flat 
statement  which  reduces  the  facts  of  the 
case  to  an  average,  and  calls  that  truth.  It  is 
absurd  to  imply,  as  does  this  old  truism,  that 
we  may  never  judge  a  man  by  his  words. 
Words  are  often  the  most  convenient  indices 
of  education,  of  cultivation,  and  of  intellectual 
power.  And  what  is  more,  a  man's  speech,  a 
man's  writing,  when  properly  interpreted,  may 
sometimes  measure  the  potentialities  of  the 
mind  more  thoroughly,  more  accurately,  than 
the  deeds  that  environment,  opportunity,, 
luck  permit.  It  is  hard  enough  to  take  the 
intellectual  measure  even  of  the  makers  of 
history,  if  we  judge  by  their  acts,  so  rapidly 
does  the  apparent  value  of  their  accomplish- 
ments vary  with  changing  conceptions  of  what 
is  and  what  is  not  worth  doing.  It  is  infinitely 
more  difficult  to  judge  in  advance  of  youths 

184 


WRITESTG  ENGLISH 


just  going  out  into  the  world  by  what  they  do. 
Their  words,  which  reveal  what  they  are  think- 
ing, and  how  they  are  thinking,  give  almost 
the  only  vision  of  their  minds,  and  "by  their 
words  ye  shall  know  them"  becomes  not  a 
perversion,  but  an  adaptation  of  the  old  text. 
Would  you  judge  of  a  boy  just  graduated  en- 
tirely by  the  acts  he  had  performed  in  college? 
If  you  did  you  would  make  some  profound 
and  illuminating  mistakes. 

This  explains,  I  think,  why  parents  and 
teachers  and  college  presidents,  and  even  un- 
dergraduates, are  exercised  over  the  study  of 
writing  English — which  is,  after  all,  just  the 
study  of  the  proper  putting  together  of  words. 
They  may  believe,  all  of  them,  that  their  con- 
cern is  merely  for  the  tangible  rewards  of  the 
power  to  write  well — the  ability  to  compose  a 
good  letter,  to  speak  forcibly  on  occasion,  to 
offer  the  amount  of  literacy  required  for  most 
"jobs."  But  I  wonder  if  the  quite  surprising 
keenness  of  their  interest  is  not  due  to  another 
cause.  I  wonder  if  they  do  not  feel — perhaps 
unconsciously — that  words  indicate  the  man; 
that  the  power  to  write  well  shows  intellect, 
and  measures,  if  not  its  profundity,  at  least  the 

185 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

stage  of  its  development.  We  fasten  on  the 
defects  of  the  letters  written  by  undergraduates, 
on  their  faltering  speeches,  on  their  confused 
examination  papers,  as  something  significant, 
ominous,  worthy  even  of  comment  in  the  press. 
And  we  are,  I  believe,  perfectly  right.  Speech 
and  writing,  if  you  get  them  in  fair  samples, 
indicate  the  extent  and  the  value  of  a  college 
education  far  better  than  a  degree. 

It  is  this  conviction  that,  pressing  upon 
the  schools  and  colleges,  has  caused  such  a 
flood  of  courses  and  text-books,  such  an  exjjen- 
diture  of  time,  energy,  and  money  in  the  teach- 
ing of  composition,  so  many  ardent  hopes  of 
accomplishment,  so  much  bitter  disappoint- 
ment at  relative  failure.  I  do  not  know  how 
many  are  directly  or  indirectly  teaching  the 
writing  of  English  in  America — ^perhaps  some 
tens  of  thousands;  the  imagination  falters  at 
the  thought  of  how  many  are  trying  to  learn  it. 
Thus  the  parent,  conscious  of  this  enormous 
endeavor  and  the  convictions  that  inspire  it, 
is  somewhat  appalled  to  hear  the  critics  without 
the  colleges  maintaining  that  we  are  not  teach- 
ing good  writing,  and  the  critics  within  pro- 
testing that  good  writing  cannot  be  taught! 

186 


WRITING  ENGLISH 


It  is  with  the  teachers,  the  administrators, 
the  theorists  on  education,  but  most  of  all  the 
teachers,  that  the  responsibility  for  the  alleged 
failure  of  this  great  project — to  endow  the 
college  graduate  with  adequate  powers  of  ex- 
pression— must  be  sought.  But  these  guardians 
of  expression  are  divided  into  many  groups,  of 
which  four  are  chief. 

There  is  first  the  great  party  of  the  Know- 
Nothings,  who  plan  and  teach  with  no  opinion 
whatsoever  as  to  the  ends  of  their  teaching. 
Under  the  conditions  of  human  nature  and 
current  financial  rewards  for  the  work,  this 
party  is  inevitably  large;  but  it  counts  for 
nothing  except  inertia.  There  is  next  the 
respectable  and  efficient  cohort  of  the  Do- 
Nothings,  who  believe  that  good  writing  and 
speaking  are  natural  emanations  from  culture, 
as  health  from  exercise,  or  clouds  from  the 
sea.  They  would  cultivate  the  mind  of  the 
undergraduate,  and  let  expression  take  care 
of  itself.  They  do  not  believe  in  teaching 
English  composition.  Next  are  the  Formalists, 
who  hold  up  a  dictionary  in  one  hand,  the  rules 
of  rhetoric  in  another,  and  say,  learn  these, 
and  good  writing  and  good  speaking  shall  be 

187 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

added  unto  you.  The  Formalists  have  weak- 
ened in  late  years.  There  have  been  desertions 
to  the  Do-Nothings,  for  the  work  of  grinding 
rules  into  unwilling  minds  is  hard,  and  it  is  far 
easier  to  adopt  a  policy  of  laissez-faire.  But 
there  have  been  far  more  desertions  into  a 
party  which  I  shall  call,  for  want  of  a  better 
name,  the  Optimists.  The  Optimists  believe 
that  in  teaching  to  write  and  speak  the  Amer- 
ican college  is  accepting  its  most  significant  if 
not  its  greatest  duty.  They  believe  that  we 
must  understand  what  causes  good  writing,  in 
order  to  teach  it;  and  that  for  the  average 
undergraduate  writing  must  be  taught. 

The  best  way  to  approach  this  grand  battle- 
ground of  educational  policies  is  by  the  very 
practical  fashion  of  pretending  (if  pretence  is 
necessary)  that  you  have  a  son  (or  a  daughter) 
ready  for  college.  What  does  he  need,  what 
must  he  have  in  a  writing  way,  in  a  speaking 
way,  when  he  has  passed  through  all  the  educa- 
tion you  see  fit  to  give  him?  What  should 
he  possess  of  such  ability  to  satisfy  the  world 
and  himself.'*  Facts,  ideas,  and  imagination, 
to  put  it  roughly,  make  up  the  substance  of 
expression.     Facts  he  must  be  able  to  present 

188 


WRITING  ENGLISH 


clearly  and  faithfully;  ideas  he  must  be  able 
to  present  clearly  and  comprehensively;  his 
imagination  he  will  need  to  express  when  his 
nature  demands  it.  And  for  all  these  needs 
he  must  be  able  to  use  knowingly  the  words 
that  study  and  experience  will  feed  to  him. 
He  must  be  able  to  combine  these  words  effec- 
tively in  order  to  express  the  thoughts  of  which 
he  is  capable.  And  these  thoughts  he  must 
work  out  along  lines  of  logical,  reasonable 
development,  so  that  what  he  says  or  writes 
will  have  an  end  and  attain  it.  In  addition, 
if  he  is  imaginative — and  who  is  not — he  should 
know  the  color  and  fire  of  words,  the  power  of 
rhythm  and  harmony  over  the  emotions,  the 
qualities  of  speech  whose  secret  will  enable  him 
to  mold  language  to  his  personality  and  per- 
haps achieve  a  style.  This  he  should  know; 
the  other  powers  he  must  have,  or  stop  short  of 
his  full  efficiency. 

Alas,  we  all  know  that  the  undergraduate, 
in  the  mass,  fails  often  to  attain  even  to  the 
power  of  logical,  accurate  statement,  whether  of 
facts  or  ideas.  It  is  true  that  most  of  the 
charges  against  him  are  to  a  greater  or  less  de- 
gree irrelevant..    Weighty   indictments  of  his 

189 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

powers  of  expression  are  based  upon  bad  spell- 
ing: a  sign,  it  is  true,  of  slovenliness,  an  in- 
dication of  a  lack  of  thoroughness  that  goes 
deeper  than  the  misplacing  of  letters,  but  not 
in  itself  a  proof  of  inability  to  express.  Great 
writers  have  often  misspelled;  and  the  letters 
our  capable  business  men  write  when  the 
stenographer  fails  to  come  back  after  lunch  are 
by  no  means  impeccable.  Other  accusations 
refer  to  a  childish  vagueness  of  expression — due 
to  the  fact  that  the  American  undergraduate 
is  often  a  child  inteUectually  rather  than  to  any 
defects  in  composition  per  se.  But  it  is  a 
waste  of  time  to  deny  that  he  writes,  if  not 
badly,  at  least  not  so  clearly,  so  correctly,  so 
intelligently  as  we  expect.  The  question  is, 
why? 

It  would  be  a  comfort  to  place  all  the  blame 
on  the  schools;  and  indeed  they  must  take  some 
blame,  not  only  because  they  deserve  it,  but 
also  to  enlighten  those  critics  of  the  college  who 
never  consider  the  kind  of  grain  which  comes 
into  our  hoppers.  The  readers  of  college  en- 
trance papers  could  tell  a  mournful  story  of 
how  the  candidates  for  our  Freshmen  classes 
write.    Here,  for  an  instance,  is  a  paragraph  in- 

190 


WRITING  ENGLISH 


tended  to  prove  that  the  writer  had  a  command 
of  simple  English,  correct  in  sentence  structure, 
spelh'ng,  capitaHzation,  and  punctuation.  The 
subject  is  "The  Value  of  Organized  Athletics 
in  Schools";  not  an  abstruse  one,  or  too  acade- 
mic: 

If  fellows  are  out  in  the  open  and  take  athletics 
say  at  a  certain  time  every-day;  These  fellows  are 
in  good  health  and  allert  in  their  lessons,  while 
those  who  take  no  exercise  are  logy  and  soft.  Or- 
ginized  athletics  in  a  school  bring  the  former,  while 
if  a  school  has  no  athletics  every-thing  goes  more  or 
less  slipshod,  and  the  fellows  are  more  liable  to  get 
into  trouble,  because  they  are  nervious  from  having 
nothing  to  do. 

This  is  a  little  below  the  average  of  the  papers 
rejected  for  entrance  to  college.  It  is  not  a 
fair  sample  of  what  the  schools  can  do;  but 
it  is  a  very  fair  sample  of  what  they  often  do 
not  do.  It  was  not  written  by  a  foreigner,  nor, 
I  judge,  by  a  son  of  illiterate  parents,  since  it 
came  from  an  expensive  Eastern  preparatory 
school.  The  reader,  marking  with  some  heat 
a  failure  for  the  essay  from  which  this  paragraph 
is  extracted,  would  not  complain  of  the  writer's 
paucity  of  ideas.     His  ideas  are  not  below  the 

13  191 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

average  of  his  age.  He  would  keep  his  wrath 
for  the  broken,  distorted  sentences,  the  silly 
spelling,  the  lack  (which  would  app)ear  in  the 
whole  composition)  of  even  a  rudimentary 
construction  to  carry  the  thought.  Spelling, 
the  fundamentals  of  punctuation,  and  the  com- 
pacting of  a  sentence  must  be  taught  in  the 
schools,  or  it  is  too  late.  It  is  too  late  to  cure 
diseases  of  these  members  in  college.  They 
can  be  abated;  but  again  and  again  they  will 
break  out.  It  is  the  school's  business  to  teach 
them;  and  the  weary  reader  sees  in  this  un- 
happy specimen  but  a  dark  and  definite  man- 
ifestation of  a  widespread  slovenhness  in 
secondary  education;  a  lack  of  thoroughness 
which  appears  not  only  in  the  failures,  but  also, 
though  in  less  measure,  among  the  better 
writers,  whose  work  is  too  good  in  other  re- 
spects not  to  be  reluctantly  passed. 

Again,  it  would  be  easy  to  place  the  blame 
for  much  of  the  slipshod  writing  of  the  under- 
graduate upon  the  standards  set  by  the  grown- 
ups outside  the  colleges.  Editors  can  tell  of 
the  endless  editing  that  contributions,  even 
from  writers  supposed  to  be  professional,  will 
sometimes  require.    And  when  such  a  sentence 

I9£ 


WRITING  ENGLISH 


as  the  following  slips  through,  and  begins  an 
article  in  a  well-known,  highly  respectable 
magazine,  we  can  only  say,  "If  gold  rust,  what 
will  iron  do?" 

Yes  the  Rot — and  with  a  very  big  R — in  sport; 
for  that,  thanks  to  an  overdone  and  too  belauded  a 
Professionalism  by  a  large  section  of  the  pandering 
press,  is  what  it  has  got  to. 

Again,  any  business  man  could  produce  from 
his  files  a  collection  of  letters  full  of  phrasing  so 
vague  and  inconsequential  that  only  his  busi- 
ness instincts  and  knowledge  of  the  situation 
enabled  him  to  interpret  it.  Any  lawyer  could 
give  numberless  instances  where  an  inability 
to  write  clear  and  simple  English  has  caused 
litigation  without  end.  Indeed,  the  bar  is 
largely  supported  by  errors  in  English  composi- 
tion! And  as  for  conversation,  conducted,  I 
will  not  say  with  pedantical  correctness,  for 
that  is  not  an  ideal,  but  with  accuracy  and 
transparency  of  thought — listen  to  the  talk 
about  you! 

However,  it  is  the  business  of  the  colleges 
to  improve  all  that;  and  though  it  is  not  easy 
to  develop  in  youth   virtues  which  are  more 

193 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE   FATHERS 

admired  than  practised  by  maturity,  let  us 
assume  that  they  should  succeed  in  turning  out 
writers  of  satisfactory  ability,  even  with  these 
handicaps,  and  look  deeper  for  the  cause  of  their 
relative  failure. 

The  chief  cause  of  the  prevalent  inadequacy 
of  expression  among  our  undergraduates  is 
patent,  and  its  effects  are  by  no  means  limited 
to  America,  as  complaints  from  France  and 
from  England  prove.  The  mob — the  many- 
headed,  the  many-mouthed,  figured  in  the  past 
by  poets  as  dumb,  or,  at  best,  as  an  incoherent 
thing  of  brutish  noises  signifying  speech — is 
acquiring  education  and  learning  how  to  express 
it.  Hundreds  of  thousands  whose  ancestors 
never  read,  and  seldom  talked  except  of  the 
simpler  needs  of  life,  are  doing  the  talking  and 
the  writing  that  their  larger  share  in  tlie  trans- 
action of  the  world's  business  demands.  Indeed, 
democracy  requires  not  only  that  the  illiterate 
shall  learn  to  read  and  write  in  the  narrower 
sense  of  the  words,  but  also  that  the  relatively 
literate  shall  seek  with  their  growing  intellectu- 
ality a  more  perfect  power  of  expression.  And 
it  is  precisely  from  the  classes  only  relatively  lit- 
erate— those  for  whom  in  the  past  there  has 

194 


WRITING  ENGLISH 


been  no  opportunity,  and  no  need,  to  become 
highly  educated — that  the  bulk  of  our  college 
students  to-day  are  coming,  the  bulk  of  the 
students  in  the  endowed  institutions  of  the 
East  as  well  as  in  the  newer  state  universities 
of  the  West.  The  typical  undergraduate  is  no 
longer  the  son  of  a  lawyer  or  a  clergyman  with 
an  intellectual  background. 

There. is  plenty  of  grumbling  among  college 
faculties,  and  in  certain  newspapers,  over  this 
state  of  affairs.  In  reality,  of  course,  it  is  the 
opportunity  of  the  American  colleges.  Let 
the  motives  be  what  they  may,  the  simple  fact 
that  so  many  American  parents  wish  to  give 
their  children  more  education  than  they  them- 
selves were  blessed  with  is  a  condition  so  favor- 
able for  those  who  believe  that  in  the  long  run 
only  intelligence  can  keep  our  civilization  on 
the  path  of  real  progress,  that  one  expects  to 
hear  congratulations  instead  of  wails  from  the 
college  campuses. 

Nevertheless,  we  pay  for  our  opportunity, 
and  we  must  expect  to  pay.  The  thousands  of 
intellectual  immigrants,  ill-supplied  with  means 
of  progress,  indefinite  of  aim,  unaware  of  their 

opportunities,   who  land   every   September  at 
195 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

the  college  gates,  constitute  a  weighty  burden, 
a  terrible  responsibility.  And  the  burden  rests 
upon  no  one  with  more  crushing  weight  than 
upon  the  unfortunate  teacher  of  composition. 
That  these  entering  immigrants  cannot  write 
well  is  a  symptom  of  their  mental  rawness.  It 
is  to  be  expected.  But  thanks  to  the  methods 
of  slipshod,  ambitious  America,  the  schools 
have  passed  them  on  still  shaky  in  the  first 
steps  of  accurate  writing — spelling,  punctua- 
tion, sentence  structure,  and  the  use  of  words. 
Thanks  to  the  failure  of  America  to  demand 
thoroughness  in  anything  but  athletics  and 
business,  they  are  blind  to  the  need  of  thorough- 
ness in  expression.  And  thanks  to  the  ines- 
capable difficulty  of  accurate  writing,  they 
resist  the  attempt  to  make  them  thorough, 
with  the  youthful  mind's  instinctive  rebellion 
against  work.  Nevertheless,  whatever  the  cost, 
they  must  learn  if  they  are  to  become  educated 
in  any  practical  and  efficient  sense;  the  im- 
migrants especially  must  learn,  since  they 
come  from  environments  where  accurate  ex- 
pression has  not  been  practised — often  has  not 
been  neede<l — and  go  to  a  future  where  it  will 
be  required  of  them.     Not  even  the  Do-Nothing 

196 


WRITING  ENGLISH 


school  denies  the  necessity  that  the  under- 
graduate should  learn  to  write  well.     But  how? 

The  Know-Nothing  school  proposes  no  ul- 
timate solution,  and  knows  none,  unless  faith- 
fully teaching  what  it  is  told  to  teach,  and  ac- 
cepting the  sweat  and  burden  of  the  day,  with 
few  of  its  rewards,  be  not  in  its  blind  way  a 
better  solution  than  to  dodge  the  responsibility 
altogether. 

The  Formalists  labor  over  precept  and  prin- 
ciple— disciplining,  commanding,  threatening — 
feeling  more  grief  over  one  letter  lost,  or  one 
comma  mishandled,  than  joy  over  the  most 
spirited  of  incorrect  effusions.  They  turn  out 
sulky  youths  who  nevertheless  have  learned 
something. 

The  Do-Nothings  propose  a  solution  that  is 
engaging,  logical — and  insufficient.  They  are  the 
philosophers  and  the  esthetes  among  teachers, 
who  see,  what  the  Formalists  miss,  that  he  who 
thinks  well  will  in  the  long  run  write  as  he 
should.  Their  especial  horror  is  of  the  com- 
pulsory theme,  extracted  from  unwilling  and 
idealess  minds.  Their  remedy  for  all  ills  of 
speech  and  pen  is:  teach,  not  writing  and 
speaking,  but  thinking;  give,  not  rules  and 
197 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

principles,  but  materials  for  thought.  And 
above  all,  do  not  force  college  students  to 
study  composition.  The  Do-Nothing  school 
has  almost  enough  truth  on  its  side  to  be  right. 
It  has  more  truth,  in  fact,  than  its  principles 
permit  it  to  make  use  of. 

The  umpire  in  this  contest — who  is  the  parent 
with  a  son  ready  for  college — should  note,  how- 
ever, two  pervading  fallacies  in  this  laissez-faire 
theory  of  writing  English.  The  first  belongs 
to  the  party  of  the  right  among  the  Do-Nothings 
— the  older  teachers  who  come  from  the  genera- 
tion that  sent  only  picked  men  to  college; 
the  second  to  the  party  of  the  left — the  younger 
men  who  are  distressed  by  the  toil,  the  waste, 
the  stupidity  that  accompany  so  much  work 
in  composition. 

The  older  men  attack  the  attempt  to  teach 
boys  to  make  literature.  Their  hatred  of  the 
cheap,  the  banal,  and  the  false  in  literature 
that  has  been  machine-made  by  men  who 
have  learned  to  express  finely  what  is  not  worth 
expressing  at  all,  leads  them  to  distrust  the 
teaching  of  English  composition.  They  con- 
demn, however,  a  method  of  teaching  that 
long  since  withered  under  their  scorn.     The 

19S 


WRITING  ENGLISH 


aim  of  the  college  course  in  composition  to-day- 
is  not  the  making  of  literature,  but  writing; 
not  the  production  of  imaginative  master- 
pieces, but  the  orderly  arrangement  of  thought 
in  words.  Through  no  foresight  of  our  own, 
but  thanks  to  the  pressure  of  our  immigrants 
upon  us,  we  have  ceased  teaching  "eloquence** 
and  "rhetoric,**  and  have  taken  upon  ourselves 
the  humbler  task  of  helping  the  thinking  mind 
to  find  words  and  a  form  of  expression  as  quickly, 
as  easily,  above  all  as  simply,  as  possible.  The 
old  teacher  of  rhetoric  aspired  to  make  Burkes, 
Popes,  or  De  Quinceys.  We  are  content  if 
our  students  become  the  masters  rather  than 
the  servants  of  their  prose. 

The  party  of  the  left  presents  a  more  frontal 
attack  upon  the  teaching  of  the  writing  of  Eng- 
lish. Show  the  undergraduate  how  to  think,  they 
say;  fill  his  mind  with  knowledge,  and  his  pen  will 
find  the  way.  Ah,  but  there  is  the  fallacy !  Why 
not  help  him  to  find  the  way — as  in  Latin,  or 
surveying,  or  English  literature.  The  way  in 
composition  can  be  taught,  as  in  these  other 
subjects.  Writing,  like  skating,  or  sailing  a 
ship,  has  its  especial  methods,  its  especial 
technique,  even  as  it  has  its  especial  medium, 

199 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

words,  and  the  larger  unities  of  expression. 
The  laws  that  govern  it  are  simple.  They 
are  always  in  intimate  connection  with  the 
thought  behind,  and  worthless  without  it,  but 
they  can  be  taught.  Ask  any  effective  teacher 
of  composition  to  show  you  what  he  has  done 
time  and  again  for  the  Freshmen  whose  sprawl- 
ing thought  he  has  helped  to  form  into  coherent 
and  unified  expression.  And  do  not  be  de- 
ceived by  analogies  drawn  from  our  colleges  of 
the  mid-nineteenth  century,  where  composi- 
tion was  not  taught,  and  men  wrote  well;  or 
from  the  English  universities,  where  the  same 
conditions  are  said  (with  dissenting  voices)  to 
exist.  In  the  first  place,  they  had  no  immi- 
grant problem  in  the  mid-century,  nor  have 
in  Oxford  and  Cambridge.  In  the  second,  the 
rigorous  translation  back  and  forward  between 
the  classics  and  the  mother-tongue,  now  obsolete 
in  America,  but  still  a  requisite  for  an  English 
university  training,  provides  a  drill  in  accuracy  of 
language  whose  efficiency  is  not  to  be  despised. 
The  student  must  express  his  intellectual 
gains  even  as  he  absorbs  them,  or  the  crystal- 
lization of  knowledge  into  personal  thought 
will  be  checked  at  the  beginning.     The  boy 


WRITING  ENGLISH 


must  be  able  to  say  what  he  knows,  or  write 
what  he  knows,  or  he  does  not  know  it.  And 
it  is  as  important  to  help  him  express  as  to 
help  him  absorb.  The  teachers  in  other  de- 
partments must  aid  in  this  task  or  we  fail; 
but  where  the  whole  duty  of  making  expression 
keep  pace  with  thought  and  with  life  is  given 
to  them,  they  will  be  forced  either  to  overload 
or  to  neglect  all  but  the  little  arcs  that  bound 
their  subjects.  And  since  they  are  specialists 
in  other  fields,  and  so  neglect  that  technique 
of  writing  which  in  itself  is  a  special  study, 
their  task,  when  they  accept  it,  is  hard,  and 
their  labor,  when  it  is  forced  upon  them,  too 
often  ineffective.  Composition  must  be  taught 
where  college  education  proceeds — that  is  the 
truth  of  the  matter;  and  if  not  taught  directly, 
then  indirectly,  with  pain  and  with  waste. 

The  school  of  the  Optimists  approaches 
this  question  of  writing  English  with  self- 
criticism  and  with  a  full  realization  of  the 
difficulties,  and  of  the  tentative  nature  of  the 
methods  now  in  use,  but  with  confidence  as 
to  the  possibility  of  ultimate  success.  In 
order  to  be  an  Optimist  in  composition  you 
must    have    some    stirrings    of    democracy    in 

201 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

your  veins.  You  must  be  interested  in  the 
need  of  the  average  man  to  shape  his  writ- 
ing into  a  useful  tool  that  will  serve  his 
purposes,  whether  in  the  ministry  or  the 
soap  business.  This  is  the  utilitarian  end 
of  writing  English.  And  you  must  be  inter- 
ested in  developing  his  powers  of  self-expres- 
sion, even  when  convinced  that  no  great 
soul  is  longing  for  utterance,  but  only  a 
commonplace  human  mind — like  your  own — 
that  will  be  eased  by  powers  of  writing  and 
of  speech.  It  is  here  that  composition  is  of 
service  to  the  imagination,  and  incidentally  to 
culture;  and  I  should  speak  more  largely  of 
this  latter  service  if  there  were  space  in  this 
essay  to  bring  forward  all  the  aspects  of  college 
composition.  It  is  the  p>ersonal  end  of  writing 
English.  If  the  average  man  turns  out  to  be  a 
superman  with  mighty  purposes  ahead,  or  if  he 
lias  a  great  soul  seeking  utterance,  he  will  have 
far  less  need  of  your  assistance;  but  you  can 
aid  him,  nevertheless,  and  your  aid  will  count 
as  never  before,  and  will  be  your  greatest  per- 
sonal reward,  though  no  greater  service  to  the 
community,  perhaps,  than  the  countless  hours 
spent  upon  the  minds  of  the  multitude. 

20« 


WRITING  ENGLISH 


In  order  to  be  an  Optimist  it  is  still  more 
important  for  you  to  understand  that  writ- 
ing English  well  depends  first  upon  intellectual 
grasp,  and  second  upon  technical  skill,  and 
always  upon  both.  As  for  the  first,  your  boy, 
if  you  are  the  parent  of  an  undergraduate,  is 
undergoing  a  curious  experience  in  college. 
Against  his  head  a  dozen  teachers  are  discharg- 
ing round  after  round  of  information.  Some- 
times they  miss;  sometimes  the  shots  glance  off; 
sometimes  the  charge  sinks  in.  And  his  brain 
is  undergoing  less  obvious  assaults.  He  is 
like  the  core  of  soft  iron  in  an  electro-magnet 
upon  which  invisible  influences  are  constantly 
beating.  His  teachers  are  harassing  his  mind 
not  only  with  facts,  but  also  with  methods  of 
thinking:  the  historical  method;  the  experi- 
mental method  of  science;  the  interpretative 
method  of  literature.  Unfortunately,  the 
charges  of  information  too  often  lodge  higgledy- 
piggledy,  like  bird-shot  in  a  sign-board;  and 
the  waves  of  influence  make  an  impression 
which  is  too  often  incoherent  and  confused. 
If  the  historians  really  taught  the  youth  to 
think  historically  from  the  beginning  and  the 
scientists  really  taught  him  to  think  scientifically 

203 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

from  the  beginning,  and  he  could  apply  his  new 
methods  of  thought  to  the  expression  of  his  own 
emotions,  experiences,  life,  then  the  teacher 
of  composition  might  confine  himself  to  the  sec- 
ond of  his  duties,  and  teach  only  that  technique 
which  makes  writing  to  uncoil  itself  as  easily 
and  as  vividly  as  a  necklace  of  matched  and  har- 
monious stones.  In  the  University  of  Utopia 
we  shall  leave  the  organization  of  thought  to 
the  other  departments,  and  have  plenty  left  to 
do;  but  we  are  not  yet  in  Utopia. 

At  present,  the  teacher  of  composition  stands 
like  a  sentry  at  the  gates  of  knowledge,  chal- 
lenging all  who  come  out  speaking  random 
words  and  thoughts,  asking:  "Have  you 
thought  it  out.'*"  "Have  you  thought  it  out 
clearly.'*"  "Can  you  put  your  conclusions  into 
adequate  words?"  And  if  the  answers  are 
unsatisfactory,  he  must  proceed  to  teach  that 
orderly,  logical  development  of  thought  from 
cause  to  effect  which  underlies  all  provinces  of 
knowledge,  and  reaches  well  into  the  unmapped 
territories  of  the  imagination.  But  even  in 
Utopia  composition  must  remain  the  testing- 
ground  of  education,  though  we  shall  hope  for 

more  satisfactory  answers  to  our  challenges. 
eo4 


WRITING  ENGLISH 


And  even  in  Utopia,  where  the  undergraduate 
will  perfect  his  thinking  while  acquiring  his 
facts,  it  will  be  the  duty  of  the  teacher  of  writ- 
ing to  help  him  to  apply  his  intellectual  powers 
to  his  experiences,  his  emotions,  his  imagination 
— in  short,  to  self-expression.  And  there  will 
still  remain  the  technique  of  writing. 

Theoretically,  when  the  undergraduate  has 
assembled  his  thoughts  he  is  ready  and  com- 
petent to  write  them,  but  practically  he  is 
neither  entirely  ready  nor  usually  entirely  com- 
petent. It  is  one  thing  to  assemble  an  auto- 
mobile; it  is  another  thing  to  run  it.  The 
technique  of  writing  is  not  nearly  so  interesting 
as  the  subject  and  the  thought  in  writing; 
just  as  the  method  of  riding  a  horse  is  not 
nearly  so  interesting  as  the  ride  itself.  And 
yet  when  you  consider  it  as  a  means  to  an  end, 
as  a  subtle,  elastic,  and  infinitely  useful  craft, 
the  method  of  writing  is  not  uninteresting  even 
to  those  who  have  to  learn  and  not  to  teach  it. 
The  technique  of  composition  has  to  do  with 
words.  We  are  most  of  us  inapt  with  words; 
even  when  ideas  begin  to  come  plentifully  they 
too  often  remain  vague,  shapeless,  ineffective 
for  want  of  words  to  name  them.     And  words 

205 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

can  be  taught;  not  merely  the  words  them- 
selves, but  their  power,  their  suggestiveness, 
their  Tightness  or  wrongness  for  the  meanings 
sought.  The  technique  of  writing  has  to  do 
with  sentences.  Good  thinking  makes  good 
sentences,  but  the  sentence  must  be  flexible  if 
it  is  to  ease  the  thought.  We  can  learn  its^ 
elasticity,  we  can  practise  the  flow  of  clauses, 
until  the  wooden  declaration  that  leaves  half 
unexpressed  gives  place  to  a  fluent  and  ac- 
curate transcript  of  the  mind,  form  fitting  sub- 
stance as  the  vase  the  water  within  it.  This 
technique  has  to  do  with  paragraphs.  The 
critic  knows  how  few  even  among  our  profes- 
sional writers  master  their  paragraphs.  It  is 
not  a  dead,  fixed  form  that  is  to  be  sought.  It 
is  rather  a  flexible  development,  which  grows 
beneath  the  reader's  eye  until  the  thought  is 
op>ened  with  vigor  and  with  truth.  It  is  inter- 
esting to  search  in  the  paragraph  of  an  in- 
effective editorial  or  article  or  theme  for  the 
sentence  that  embodies  the  thought;  to  find 
it  dropped  like  a  turkey's  egg  where  the  first 
opportunity  offers,  or  hidden  by  the  rank 
growth  of  comment  and  reflection  about  it. 
Such  research  is  illuminating  for  those  who  do 

806 


WRITING  ENGLISH 


not  believe  in  the  teaching  of  composition; 
— if  it  begins  at  home,  so  much  the  better. 
And,  finally,  the  technique  of  writing  has  to  do 
with  the  whole,  whether  sonnet  or  business 
letter  or  report  to  a  board  of  directors.  How  to 
lead  one  thought  into  another;  how  to  exclude 
the  irrelevant;  how  to  weigh  upon  that  which 
is  important;  how  to  hold  together  the  whole 
structure  so  that  the  subject,  all  the  subject, 
and  nothing  but  the  subject,  shall  be  laid  before 
the  reader:  this  requires  good  thinking,  but 
good  thinking  without  technical  skill  is  like  a 
strong  arm  in  tennis  without  facility  in  the 
strokes. 

The  program  I  have  outlined  is  simpler  in 
theory  than  in  practice.  In  practice,  it  is 
easier  to  discover  the  disorder  than  the  thought 
that  it  confuses;  in  practice,  technical  skill 
must  be  forced  upon  undergraduates  unaccus- 
tomed to  thoroughness,  in  a  country  that  in  no 
department  of  life,  except  perhaps  business, 
has  hitherto  been  compelled  to  value  technique. 
Even  the  optimist  grows  pessimistic  sometimes 
in  teaching  composition. 

And  yet  in  the  teaching  of  composition  the  re- 
sults are  perhaps  more  evident  than  elsewhere  in 

14  207 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

the  whole  range  of  college  work.  It  is  wonder- 
ful to  see  what  can  be  accomplished  by  an  en- 
thusiast in  the  sport  of  transmuting  brain  into 
words.  When  the  teacher  seeks  for  his  material 
in  the  active  interests  of  the  student — whether 
athletics  or  engineering  or  literature  or  catching 
trout, — when  he  stimulates  the  finer  interests, 
drawing  oflF,  as  it  were,  the  cream  into  words, 
the  results  are  convincing.  Writing  is  one  of 
the  most  fascinating,  most  engaging  of  pursuits 
for  the  man  with  a  craving  to  grasp  the  reality 
about  him  and  name  it  in  words.  And  even 
for  the  undergraduate,  whose  imagination  is 
just  developing,  and  whose  brain  protests 
against  logical  thought,  it  can  be  made  as 
interesting  as  it  is  useful. 

Although  the  teaching  of  English  composi- 
tion in  this  country  is  a  vast  industry  in  which 
thousands  of  workmen  are  employed,  and  in 
which  a  million  or  so  young  minds  are  invested, 
I  do  not  wish  to  take  it  too  seriously.  There 
are  many  accomplishments  more  important 
for  the  welfare  of  the  race.  And  yet,  if  it  be 
true  that  maturity  of  intellect  is  never  attained 
without  that  clearness  and  accuracy  of  think- 
ing which  can  be  made  to  show  itself  in  good 


WRITING  ENGLISH 


writing,  then  the  faihire  of  the  undergraduate 
to  write  well  is  serious,  and  the  struggle  to  make 
him  write  better,  worthy  of  the  attention  of 
those  who  have  children  to  be  educated.  I 
do  not  think  that  success  in  this  struggle  will 
come  through  the  policy  of  laissez-faire.  All 
undergraduates  profit  by  organized  help  in 
their  writing;  many  require  it.  I  do  not  think 
that  success  will  come  by  a  pedantical  insistence 
upon  correctness  in  form  without  regard  to  the 
sense.  Squeezing  unwilling  words  from  in- 
dijfferent  minds  may  be  discipline;  it  certainly 
is  not  teaching.  I  think  that  success  will 
come  only  to  the  teacher  who  is  a  middleman 
between  thought  and  expression,  valuing  both. 
When  we  succeed  in  making  the  bulk  of  our 
undergi'aduates  really  think;  when  we  can 
inspire  them  with  a  modicum  of  that  passion 
for  truth  in  words  which  is  the  moving  force 
of  the  good  writer;  when  the  schools  help  us 
and  the  outside  world  demands  and  supports 
eflBciency  in  diction  —  then  we  shall  carry 
through  the  program  of  the  Optimists. 


TEACHING  ENGLISH 

THE  so-called  new  professions  have  been 
given  abundant  space  of  late  in  the  Sun- 
day newspaper;  but  among  them  I  do  not  find 
numbered  the  teaching  of  English.  Neverthe- 
less, with  such  exceptions  as  advertising,  social 
service,  and  eflSciency-engineering,  it  is  one  of 
the  newest  as  well  as  one  of  the  largest.  I 
do  not  mean  the  teaching  of  English  writing. 
Directly  or  indirectly  that  has  been  taught 
since  the  heavenly  grace  instructed  Cacdmon 
in  his  stable.  I  mean  English  literature,  which 
has  been  made  a  subject  of  fonnal  instruction 
in  our  schools  and  colleges  only  since  the  latter 
half  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Yet  already 
the  colleges  complain  that  the  popularity  of 
this  comparatively  recent  addition  to  the 
curriculum  is  so  great  that  harder,  colder, 
more  disciplinary  subjects  are  pushed  to  the 
wall  (and  this  in  practical  America!);  and  in 
the  schools  only  the  so-called  vocational  courses 

210 


TEACHING  ENGLISH 


are  as  much  talked  about  and  argued  over  by 
the  educational  powers.  An  army  of  men 
and  women  are  teaching  or  trying  to  teach  us 
English — which  includes  American — literature. 
The  results  of  this  new  profession — as  even 
those  who  earn  their  bread  thereby  are  will- 
ing to  confess — are  sometimes  humorous.  The 
comicality  of  scholarship — as  when  the  sweaty 
hack-work  of  some  hanger-on  of  the  great 
Elizabethans  is  subjected  to  elaborate  study 
and  published  in  two  volumes — belongs  rather 
to  the  satire  of  research  than  to  teaching.  But 
there  are  many  ludicrous  sequels  to  the  com- 
pulsory study  of  literature.  Poor  Hawthorne, 
shyest  and  rarest  of  spirit  among  our  men  of 
letters,  becomes  a  text-book  for  the  million. 
Dick  Steele,  who  dashed  off  his  cheerful  trifles 
between  sprees,  is  raised  to  a  dreary  immortality 
of  comparison  with  the  style  and  humor  of 
Addison;  their  reputations — like  a  new  torture 
in  the  Inferno — seesawing  with  the  changing 
opinions  of  critics  who  edit  "The  Spectator" 
for  the  schools.  And  Shakespeare,  who  shares 
the  weaknesses  of  all  mortal  workmen,  is  made 
a  literary  god  (since  this  new  profession  must 
have  its  divinity),  before  whom  all  tastes  bow 

211 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

down.  Then  in  our  classes  we  proceed  to 
paraphrase,  to  annotate,  to  question  and  cross- 
question  the  books  these  great  men  have  left 
behind  them,  until  their  tortured  spirits  must 
envy  the  current  unpopularity  of  Latin  and 
Greek.  As  one  of  my  undergraduates  wrote 
at  the  end  of  an  examination : 

Shakespeare,  this  prosy  paper  makes  me  blush; 
Your  finest  fancies  we  have  turned  to — mush! 

Nevertheless,  it  is  the  dilettante,  the  con- 
noisseur, and  the  esthete  who  sneer  at  the  re- 
sults of  teaching  English.  The  practical  man 
will  not  usually  be  scornful,  even  when  he  is 
unsympathetic;  and  the  wise  many,  who  know 
that  power  over  good  books  is  better  than  a 
legacy,  are  too  thankful  for  benefits  received 
to  judge  a  profession  by  its  failures.  In  truth, 
the  finer  minds,  the  richer  lives  that  must  be 
made  possible  if  our  democracy  is  not  to  be- 
come a  welter  of  vulgar  commercialism,  are 
best  composted  by  literature.  And  therefore 
the  teacher  of  English,  provided  he  can  really 
teach,  has  a  just  claim  upon  the  attention  of 
every  American  parent.  But  what  is  teaching 
literature? 

212 


TEACHING  ENGLISH 


There  is  a  function  borrowed  from  Germany 
for  our  graduate  schools,  in  which  a  group  of 
professors  have  at  their  mercy  for  an  hour  of 
oral  examination  a  much-to-be-pitied  candidate 
for  the  degree  of  doctor  of  philosophy.  They 
may  ask  him  any  question  in  their  field  that 
appears  on  previous  reflection  to  be  sufficiently 
difficult;  and  as  the  more  one  knows  the  more 
difficulty  a  given  subject  presents,  and  they 
are  specialists,  the  ordeal  is  infernal.  If  I 
were  brought  before  a  like  tribunal,  composed 
of  parents  of  our  undergraduates,  and  asked  to 
justify  this  new  profession,  I  should  probably 
begin  by  asserting  that  the  purpose  of  teaching 
English  is  to  give  light  for  the  mind  and  solace 
for  the  heart. 

The  function  of  the  teacher  of  English  as  a 
shedder  of  light  is  perhaps  more  familiar  to 
himself  than  to  the  world ;  but  it  assuredly  exists 
and  has  even  been  forced  upon  him.  The 
teacher  of  pure  science  utterly  repudiates  the 
notion  that  he  is  to  shed  light  upon  the  meaning 
of  life.  His  business  is  to  teach  the  observed 
processes  of  Nature,  and  he  is  too  busy  exploding 
old  theories  of  how  she  works,  and  creating  new 
ones,  to  concern  himself  with  the  spiritual  wel- 

213 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

fare  of  this  generation.  Perhaps  it  is  just  as 
welL  As  for  the  philosophers,  in  spite  of  the 
efforts  of  William  James  they  have  not  yet 
consented  to  elucidate  their  subject  for  the 
benefit  of  the  democracy; — with  this  result, 
that  the  average  undergraduate  learns  the 
little  philosophy  that  is  taught  him,  in  his  class 
in  English  literature.  Indeed,  as  if  by  a  con- 
spiracy in  a  practical  world  anxious  to  save 
time  for  the  study  of  facts,  not  only  the  at- 
tributes of  culture,  but  even  ethics,  morality, 
and  the  implications  of  science  are  left  to  the 
English  department. 

The  burden  is  heavy.  The  temptation  to 
throw  it  off,  or  to  make  use  of  the  opportunity 
for  a  course  in  things-in-general  and  an  easy 
reputation,  is  great.  And  yet  all  the  world 
of  thought  does  form  a  part  of  a  course  in 
English,  for  all  that  has  matured  in  human 
experience  finds  its  way  into  literature.  And 
since  good  books  are  the  emanations  of  radiant 
minds,  the  teacher  of  English  must  in  the 
long  run  teach  light. 

But  even  if  literature  did  not  mean  light  for 
the  mind,  it  would  still  be  worth  while  to  try 
to  teach  it,  if  only  to  prepare  that  solace  for 
214 


TEACHING  ENGLISH 


the  weary  soul  in  reading  which  the  most  active 
must  some  day  crave.  The  undergraduate 
puts  on  a  solemn  face  when  told  that  he  may 
need  the  stimulus  of  books  as  an  incentive  to 
life,  or  the  relaxation  of  books  as  a  relief  from 
it;  but  he  remains  inwardly  unimpressed.  And 
yet  one  does  not  have  to  be  a  philosopher  to 
know  that  in  this  age  of  hurry  and  strain  and 
sudden  depressions  the  power  to  fall  back  on 
other  minds  and  other  times  is  above  price. 
Therefore  we  teach  literature  in  the  hope  that  to 
the  poets  and  the  essayists,  the  playwrights 
and  the  novelists,  men  may  be  helped  to  bring 
slack  or  weary  minds  for  cure. 

All  essays  upon  literature  discourse  upon  the 
light  and  sweetness  that  flow  from  it.  But 
this  is  not  an  essay  upon  literature;  and  that  is 
why  I  have  dismissed  these  hoped-for  results 
so  summarily,  although  profoundly  believ- 
ing that  they  are  the  ultimate  purpose — in- 
deed, the  raison  d'etre — of  teaching  English. 
My  business  is  rather  with  the  immediate 
aim  of  these  English  courses  to  which  we  are 
sending  our  sons  and  daughters  by  the  tens  of 
thousands.  I  wish  to  discuss  frankly,  not  so 
much  the  why,  as  the  how,  of  teaching  English. 

215 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

Fine  words  cannot  accomplish  it.  When  I 
first  began  to  teach  I  met  my  Freshman  classes 
with  rich  and  glowing  words — which  I  have 
repeated  with  more  sobriety  in  the  preceding 
paragraphs.  Literature,  I  said,  is  the  criti- 
cism of  life;  it  is  the  spur  of  the  noble  mind 
and  the  comfort  of  the  depressed.  My  ardent 
descriptions  fell  flat.  They  were  too  true;  the 
Freshmen  had  heard  them  before.  Now  I  begin 
bluntly  with  the  assertion  that  the  average 
young  American  does  not  know  how  to  read; 
and  proceed  to  prove  it.  To  read  out  the 
meaning  of  a  book;  to  interpret  literature  as 
it  in  turn  interprets  life — whatever  may  be  our 
ultimate  purpose,  that  I  take  to  be  the  most 
immediate  aim  of  teaching  English. 

I  do  not  intend  to  slight  the  knowledge  to  be 
gained.  Facts  are  well  worth  picking  up  on 
the  way,  but  unless  they  are  used  they  remain 
just  facts — and  usually  forgotten  ones.  Where 
are  your  college  note-books,  crammed  with 
the  facts  of  English  lectures?  How  much 
does  the  graduate  remember  of  dates  of  editions, 
of  "tendencies,"  and  "sources"?  What  can 
he  say  (as  the  examination  paper  has  it)  of 
Vaughan,  of  Cynewulf,  of  the  Gothic  novel, 


TEACHING  ENGLISH 


and  of  pantisocracy?  Something,  somewhere,  I 
hope,  for  if  the  onward  sweep  of  English  lit- 
erature is  not  familiar  to  him,  if  the  great 
writers  have  no  local  habitation  and  a  name, 
and  Milton  must  be  read  in  terms  of  twentieth- 
century  England,  and  Poe  as  if  he  wrote  for 
a  Sunday  newspaper  syndicate,  his  English 
courses  were  dismally  unsuccessful.  And  yet 
to  have  heard  of  Beowulf  and  Tess  of  the 
D'Urbervilles  and  Fair  Rosamond  is  not  to 
know  English  literature. 

The  undergraduate  (and  his  parent)  must 
be  able  to  read  literature  in  order  to  know 
it,  and  to  read  he  must  have  the  power  of 
interpretation.  It  is  easy  to  read  the  story 
in  the  Sunday  supplement,  where  thoughts  of 
one  syllable  are  clothed  in  obvious  symbols 
supposed  to  represent  life.  It  is  harder  to 
read  contemporary  writing  that  contains  real 
thought  and  real  observation,  for  the  mind 
and  the  imagination  have  to  be  stretched  a 
little  to  take  in  the  text.  It  is  still  more  dif- 
ficult to  enjoy  with  due  comprehension  the 
vast  treasure  of  our  inherited  literature,  which 
must  alwaj's  outweigh  in  value  our  current 
gains.  There  the  boy  you  send  us  to  teach 
217 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

will  be  perplexed  by  the  peculiarities  of  lan- 
guage, set  astray  by  his  lack  of  background, 
and  confused  by  the  operations  of  a  time-spirit 
radically  different  from  his  own.  A  few  trivial- 
ities of  diction  or  reference  may  hide  from 
him  the  life  that  some  great  genius  has  kept 
burning  in  the  printed  page.  And  even  if  the 
unfamiliar  and  the  unexplained  do  not  dis- 
courage him,  even  if  he  reads  Shakespeare 
or  Milton  or  Gray  with  his  ardor  unchilled, 
nevertheless,  if  he  does  not  interpret,  he  gets 
but  half.  Here  is  the  chief  need  for  teaching 
English. 

Hotspur,  for  example,  in  the  first  part  of 
Shakespeare's  "Henrj'  IV.,"  bursts  into  en- 
thusiastic si>eech: 

By  Heaven,  raethinks  it  were  an  easy  leap. 

To  pluck  bright  honor  from  the  pale-faced  moon. 

Or  dive  into  the  bet  torn  of  the  deep. 

Where  fathom-line  could  never  touch  the  ground, 

And  pluck  up  drowned  honor  by  the  locks. 

Can   the  Freshman   read   it?    Not  unless   he 

knows  what  "honor"  meant  for  Hotspur  and 

for  Shakesf)eare.     Not  unless  he  comprehends 

the  ardent  exuberance  of  the  Renaissance  that 

inspires  the  extravagance  of  the  verse. 
tl8 


TEACHING  ENGLISH 


Or  Milton's  famous  portrait  of  Satan: 

Darkened  so,  yet  shone 
Above  them  all  the  Archangel :  but  his  face 
Deep  scars  of  thunder  had  intrenched,  and  care 
Sat  on  his  faded  cheek,  but  under  brows 
Of  dauntless  courage  and  considerate  pride. 
Waiting  revenge. 

Do  you  see  him?  Not  unless,  like  Milton,  you 
remember  Jove  and  his  lightnings,  not  unless 
the  austere  imagery  of  the  Old  Testament  is 
present  in  your  imagination;  not  unless  "con- 
siderate" means  more  to  you  than  an  accent 
in  the  verse.  In  truth,  the  undergraduate 
cannot  read  Stevenson's  "Markheim,"  Tenny- 
son's "Lotos-Eaters,"  Kipling's  "Recessional," 
or  an  essay  by  Emerson — to  gather  scattered 
instances — without  background,  without  an 
interpretative  insight,  and  without  an  exact 
understanding  of  the  thought  behind  the  words. 
Without  them  he  must  be  content,  at  best, 
with  a  fifty-per-cent.  efficiency  of  comprehen- 
sion. And  fifty  per  cent,  is  below  the  margin 
of  enjoyment  and  below  the  point  where  real 
profit  begins. 

But  even  fifty  per  cent,  is  a  higher  figure  than 
some  undergraduates  attain  at  the  beginning 

219 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

of  their  college  careers.  Old  Justice  Shallow, 
for  instance,  pompous,  boastful,  tedious — Jus- 
tice Shallow  with  his  ridiculous  attempts  to 
prove  himself  as  wicked  as  Falstaff,  and  his 
empty  sententiousness,  is  certainly  as  well 
defined  a  comic  character  as  Shakespeare 
presents,  and  yet  it  is  astonishing  how  much 
of  him  is  missed  by  the  reader  who  cannot  yet 
interpret. 

"Justice  Shallow,"  writes  a  Freshman,  "seems 
to  be  a  jolly  old  man  who  loves  company  and 
who  would  do  anything  to  please  his  guests." 
"Justice  Shallow,"  says  another,  "was  an 
easy-going  man ;  that  is,  he  did  not  allow  things 
to  worry  him.  At  times  he  was  very  mean." 
"Justice  Shallow,"  a  third  proposes,  "is  kind- 
hearted.  .  .  .  He  means  well,  but  things  do 
not  come  out  as  he  had  planned  them." 

Shallow  jolly!  Shallow  kind-hearted!  Per- 
haps occasionally, — for  the  benefit  of  gentle- 
men from  the  court.  But  to  describe  him  thus 
is  as  if  one  should  define  an  elephant  as  an 
animal  with  four  legs  and  a  fondness  for  hay. 
They  missed  the  flavor  of  Shallow,  these  boys, 
not  because  it  was  elusive,  but  because  they 

had  not  learned  to  read. 
tio 


TEACHING  ENGLISH 


All  good  books,  whether  new  or  old,  present 
such  difficulties  of  interpretation — difficulties 
often  small  in  themselves  but  great  when  they 
prevent  that  instant  flush  of  appreciation 
which  literature  demands.  And  therefore,  if 
one  cannot  read  lightly,  easily,  intelligently — 
why,  the  storehouse  is  locked;  the  golden 
books  may  be  purchased  and  perused,  but 
they  will  be  little  better  than  so  much  paper 
and  print.  Two-thirds  of  an  English  course 
must  be  learning  to  search  out  the  meaning  of 
the  written  word;  must  be  just  learning  how 
to  read. 

This  is  the  English  teacher's  program.  Does 
he  carry  it  out?  In  truth,  it  is  depressing  to 
sit  in  a  recitation  -  room,  estimating,  while 
some  one  recites  and  your  voice  is  resting, 
the  volume  and  the  flow  of  the  streams  of 
literary  instruction  washing  over  the  under- 
graduates; and  then  to  see  them  bob  up  to 
the  surface  at  the  end  of  the  hour,  seemingly  as 
impervious  as  when  their  heads  went  under. 
We  teachers  of  English  propose,  as  I  have 
said  above,  to  ennoble  the  mind  by  showing 
it  how  to  feed  upon  the  thoughts  of  the  great, 
to  save  the  state  by  sweetness  and  light;  while 

221 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

our  students  sell  their  Miltons  and  Tennysons 
to  the  second-hand  bookstore,  and  buy  the 
machine-made,  please -the -million  magazines! 
The  pessimist  will  assert  that  there  is  a  screw 
out  somewhere  in  our  intellectual  platform. 

Not  out,  but  loose.  My  picture  of  the  under- 
graduate, like  Hamlet's  picture  of  Claudius,  is  a 
likeness,  but  not  a  faithful  portrait.  The  col- 
lege English  course  certainly  carries  with  it 
no  guarantee  of  solid  literary  taste,  no  cer- 
tainty that  the  average  bachelor  of  arts  will 
take  a  stand  against  the  current  cheapening 
of  literature.  He  may  have  a  row  of  leather- 
bound  pocket  Shakespeares  in  the  living-room 
bookcase,  but  that  is  sometimes  the  only  out- 
ward evidence  of  his  baptism  into  the  kingdom 
of  English  books.  Further  than  that  you  can- 
not be  sure  of  what  teaching  English  has  done 
for  him.  But  neither  can  you  be  certain  that 
this  is  all  it  has  done  for  him.  The  evidence 
of  his  parents  is  not  always  to  be  trusted,  for 
the  undergraduate  feels  that  grown-up  America 
does  not  approve  of  bookishness,  and  so,  if  he 
has  any  literary  culture,  keeps  it  to  himself. 
Men  of  letters,  editorial  writers,  and  other 
professional  critics  of  our  intellectual  accom- 

822 


TEACHING  ENGLISH 


plishments  are  not  good  judges,  for  they  are 
inclined  to  apply  to  a  recent  graduate  the 
standards  of  an  elegant  and  allusive  brand  of 
culture  which  is  certainly  not  American,  though 
in  its  way  admirable  enough.  I  am  doubtful 
myself,  but  this  much  my  experience  has 
taught  me,  that,  disappointing  as  the  apparent 
results  of  teaching  English  may  be,  the  actual 
results  are  far  more  considerable  than  pessimists 
suppose — as  great,  perhaps,  as  we  can  expect. 

The  mind  of  the  undergraduate  is  like  a  slab 
of  coarse-grained  wood  upon  which  the  cabinet- 
maker lavishes  his  stain.  Its  empty  pores 
soak  in  the  polishing  mixture,  no  matter  how 
richly  it  may  be  applied,  and  in  many  in- 
stances we  fail  to  get  the  expected  gloss.  Much 
English  teaching,  in  fact,  is  (to  change  the 
figure)  subterranean  in  its  effects.  You  may 
remember  no  Tennyson,  and  yet  have  gained 
a  sensitiveness  to  moral  beauty  and  an  ear  for 
the  glory  of  words.  Your  Shakespeare  may 
have  gathered  dust  for  a  decade,  and  yet  still 
be  quickening  your  sympathy  with  human 
nature.  That  glow  in  the  presence  of  a  soar- 
ing pine  or  towering  mountain;  that  warmth 
of  the  imagination   as  some  modern  struggle 

15  223 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

recalls  an  ancient  protagonist;  the  feeling  that 
life  is  always  interesting  somehow,  somewhere — 
how  much  of  this  is  due  to  Wordsworth,  Shelley, 
Stevenson,  Browning,  or  Keats,  dim  in  the 
memory,  perhaps,  but  potent  in  the  sub- 
consciousness, no  one  can  ever  determine. 
The  psychologist  will  answer,  much.  The 
layman  must  consider  the  spring,  the  recup)er- 
ative  power,  the  quantity  and  quality  of 
happiness  among  the  well-read  in  comparison 
with  the  unread,  for  his  reply.  The  results 
of  my  own  observation  enable  me  to  view  even 
the  debris  of  lectures  and  study  in  a  "flunker's" 
examination  paf)er  with  dejection,  to  be  sure, 
but  not  with  despair.  The  undergraduate, 
I  admit  sorrowfully,  is  usually  superficial  in 
his  reading,  and  spmetimes  merely  barbarous 
in  the  use  he  makes  of  it;  but  there  is  more 
gained  from  his  training  in  literature  than 
meets  the  sight. 

Thus  the  effects  of  English  teaching  are 
sometimes  hidden.  But  English  teachers  are 
so  common  nowadays  that  of  them  every  one 
may  form  his  own  opinion.  And,  indeed,  the 
rain  of  criticism  falls  upon  just  and  unjust  alike. 

The  undergraduate,  if  he  takes  the  trouble 

224 


TEACHING  ENGLISH 


to  classify  his  teachers  of  English  otherwise 
than  as  "hard"  or  "easy,"  would  probably 
divide  the  species  into  two  types:  the  highly 
polished  variety  with  somewhat  erratic  clothes 
and  an  artistic  temperament,  and  the  cold 
scholar  who  moves  in  a  world  of  sources,  edi- 
tions, and  dates.  I  would  be  content  with 
this  classification,  superficial  as  it  is,  were  it 
not  that  the  parent  of  the  undergraduate,  who 
is  footing  the  bills,  has  made  no  classification 
at  all,  and  deserves,  if  he  wants  it,  a  more 
accurate  description  of  the  profession  he  is 
patronizing.  English  teachers,  I  may  say  to 
him,  are  of  at  least  four  difi'erent  kinds.  For 
convenience  I  shall  name  them  the  gossips, 
the  inspirationists,  the  scientists,  and  the 
middle-of-the-road  men  whose  ambition  it  is 
to  teach  neither  anecdote,  nor  things  in  general, 
nor  mere  facts,  but  literature. 

The  literary  gossip  is  the  most  engaging,  and 
not  the  least  useful  of  them  all.  As  the  horse's 
hoofs  beat  "proputty,  proputty,  proputty" 
for  Tennyson's  greedy  farmer,  so  "personality" 
rings  for  ever  in  his  brain,  and  constantly 
mingles  in  his  speech.  "The  man  behind  the 
book,"  is  his  worthy  motto;   and  his  lectures 

225 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

are  stuffed  with  biographical  anecdote  until 
the  good  stories  spill  over.  No  humorous 
weakness  of  the  Olympians  is  left  without  its 
zest,  and  the  student  learns  more  of  Carlyle's 
indigestion,  Coleridge's  absent-mindedness,  or 
the  deformity  of  Pope,  than  of  their  immortal 
works. 

The  literary  gossip  is  an  artist.  He  can  raise 
dead  authors  to  life,  and  give  students  of  little 
imagination  an  interest  in  the  books  of  the  past 
which  they  never  would  have  gained  from  mere 
printed  texts.  But  he  has  the  faults  of  the 
artistic  temperament.  He  will  sacrifice  every- 
thing in  order  to  impress  his  hearers.  Hence 
he  is  never  dull;  and  when  he  combines  his  skill 
in  anecdote  with  real  literary  criticism,  he 
becomes  a  teacher  of  such  power  that  college 
presidents  compete  for  liis  services.  But  when 
his  talents  do  not  rise  above  tlie  ordinary,  his 
courses  are  better  designated  vaudeville  than 
the  teaching  of  English.  As  the  old  song  has 
it,  when  he  is  good  he  is  very,  very  good,  for 
he  plows  up  the  unresponsive  mind  so  that 
appreciation  may  grow  there.  But  when  he 
is  bad,  he  is  horrid. 

The  inspirationists  held   the  whole  field  of 

226 


TEACHING  ENGLISH 


English  teaching  until  the  scientists  attacked 
them  in  the  rear,  found  their  ammunition- 
wagons  lacking  in  facts,  and  put  them  upon 
their  defense.  The  inspirationist  was — no  is, 
for  he  has  been  sobered  but  not  routed  by  the 
onslaughts  of  German  methodologies — a  fighter 
in  the  cause  of  "uplift"  in  America.  In  1814 
he  would  have  been  a  minister  of  the  gospel 
or  an  apostle  of  political  freedom.  In  1914 
he  uses  Shakespeare,  Milton,  the  novelists, 
the  essayists,  indifferently  to  preach  ideas — 
moral,  political,  esthetic,  philosophical,  scientific 
— to  his  undergraduates.  At  the  club  table 
after  hours  he  orates  at  imaginary  Freshmen. 
*'Make  'em  think!"  he  shouts.  "Make  'em 
feel !  Give  them  ideas — and  their  literary  train- 
ing will  take  care  of  itself!"  And  the  course  he 
offers.is  like  those  famous  medieval  ones,  where 
the  whole  duty  of  man,  here  and  hereafter, 
was  to  be  obtained  from  a  single  professor. 
Indeed,  since  the  field  of  teaching  began  to  be 
recruited  from  predestined  pastors  who  found 
the  pulpit  too  narrow  for  their  activities,  it  is 
simply  astonishing  how  much  ethics,  spiritu- 
ality, and  inspiration  generally  has  been  freed 
in  the  class-room.  Ask  the  undergraduates, 
227 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

I  mean  no  flippancy.  I  thoroughly  believe 
that  it  is  far  more  imp)ortant  to  teach  literature 
than  the  facts  about  literature.  And  all  these 
things  are  among  the  ingredients  of  literature. 
I  am  merely  pointing  out  the  extremes  of  extra- 
literary  endeavor  into  which  the  remoteness 
of  the  philosophers,  the  slackening  of  religious 
training  in  the  home,  and  the  absence  of  esthetic 
influences  in  American  life  have  driven  some 
among  us.  A  friend  of  mine  begins  his  course 
in  Carlyle  with  a  lecture  on  the  unreality  of 
matter.  Browning  with  a  discussion  of  the 
immortality  of  the  soul,  and  Ruskin  with  an 
exhibition  of  pictures.  He  is  responding  to 
the  needs  of  the  age.  Like  most  of  the  in- 
spirationists,  he  does  not  fail  to  teach  some- 
thing; like  many  of  them,  he  has  little  time 
left  for  literature. 

The  day  does  not  differ  from  the  night  more 
sharply  than  the  scientist  in  teaching  English 
does  from  the  inspirationist.  The  literary  scien- 
tist sprang  into  being  when  the  scientific  activ- 
ity of  the  nineteenth  century  reached  esthet- 
ics and  began  to  lay  bare  our  inaccuracies  and 
our  ignorjmce.  Chaucer,  Spenser,  Jonson,  De- 
foe— we  knew  all  too  little  about  their  lives, 

228 


TEACHING  ENGLISH 


and  of  what  we  knew  a  disgraceful  part  was 
wrong.  Our  knowledge  of  the  writers  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  period,  and  of  the  thirteenth 
and  fifteenth  centuries,  of  the  minor  Eliza- 
bethan dramatists  and  the  lyricists  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  consisted  chiefly  of  ill- 
assorted  facts  or  unproved  generalizations. 
Our  catalogue  of  errors  was  a  long  one.  The 
response  to  this  crying  need  for  scholarship, 
for  science,  was  slow — but  when  it  came,  it 
came  with  a  rush.  Nowadays,  the  great 
majority  of  university  teachers  of  English  are 
specialists  in  some  form  of  literary  research. 

As  far  as  the  teacher  is  concerned,  the  result 
has  doubtless  been  good.  There  have  been 
broader  backgrounds,  more  accuracy  in  state- 
ment, less  "blufl^g" — in  a  word,  more  thor- 
oughness; and  the  out-and-out  scientists  have 
set  a  pace  in  this  respect  that  other  teachers 
of  English  have  had  to  follow.  But,  curiously 
enough,  while  the  teacher  of  English,  and  espe- 
cially the  professed  scientist,  has  become  more 
thorough,  the  students  are  said  to  be  less  so. 
How  to  account  for  so  distressing  a  phenomenon ! 

The  truth  seems  to  be  that  science  in  English 
literature  has  become  so  minute  in  its  investiga- 

229 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

tion  of  details,  so  scrupulous  in  the  accuracy 
of  even  the  most  trivial  statement,  that  the 
teacher  who  specializes  in  this  direction  despairs 
of  dragging  his  classes  after  him.  Scholar- 
ship for  this  scientist  has  become  esoteric. 
Neither  the  big  world  outside  nor  his  little 
world  of  the  class-room  can  comprehend  his 
passion  for  date  and  source  and  text;  and, 
like  the  Mormon  who  keeps  his  wives  at  home, 
he  has  come  to  practise  his  faith  without  im- 
posing it  upon  others.  The  situation  is  not 
entirely  unfortunate.  Until  scientific  scholar- 
ship has  ended  its  mad  scurryings  for  the  un- 
considered trifles  still  left  uninvestigated,  and 
begun  upon  the  broader  problems  of  criticism 
and  of  teaching  that  will  remain  when  all  the 
dates  are  gathered  and  all  the  sources  hunted 
home,  it  is  questionable  whether  it  has  any- 
thing but  facts  to  contribute  to  the  elementary 
teaching  of  English. 

At  present  the  scientist's  best  position  is 
in  the  upper  branches  of  a  college  education. 
There  he  is  doing  good  work — except  when  an 
emotional,  sensitive  Junior  or  Senior,  eager 
to  be  thrilled  by  literature,  and  to  understand 
it,  is  provided  with  nothing  but  "scientific" 

m 


TEACHING  ENGLISH 


courses.  For  studying  about  literature — and 
this  is  the  scientist's  program — can  in  no  pos- 
sible sense  be  regarded  as  a  satisfactory  alter- 
native to  studying  the  thing  itself,  no  matter 
how  great  may  be  its  auxiliary  value.  And 
many  a  recent  graduate  of  many  a  college 
who  reads  these  lines  will  recognize  his  own 
plight  in  that  of  the  youth  who,  finding  only 
gossips  who  amused  him,  inspirationists  who 
sermoned  him,  and  scientists  who  reduced 
glowing  poetry  to  a  skeleton  of  fact,  decided 
that,  in  spite  of  the  catalogue,  literature  itself 
was  not  taught  in  his  university. 

What  is  teaching  literature?  But  I  have 
already  answered  that  question  according  to 
my  own  beliefs,  in  the  earlier  part  of  this  essay. 
It  must  be — at  least  for  the  undergraduate — 
instruction  in  the  interpretation  of  literature; 
it  must  be  teaching  how  to  read.  For  if  the 
boy  is  once  taught  how  to  turn  the  key,  only 
such  forces  of  heredity  and  environment  as 
no  teaching  will  utterly  overcome  can  prevent 
him  from  entering  the  door.  It  is  this  that 
all  wise  teachers  of  English  realize;  it  is  this 
that  the  middle-of-the-road  men  try  to  put 
in   practice,     I  give  them   this   title  because 

«3l 


COLLEGE  SONS  AND  COLLEGE  FATHERS 

they  do  keep  to  the  middle  of  the  literary 
road  —  because  they  understand  that  the 
teacher  of  English  should  avoid  the  extremes 
I  have  depicted  in  the  preceding  paragraphs, 
without  despising  them.  He  should  master 
his  facts  as  the  scientist  does,  because  it  is  too 
late  in  the  day  to  impose  unverified  facts  or 
shaky  generalizations  even  uf)on  hearers  as 
uncritical  as  the  usual  run  of  undergraduates. 
He  should  try  to  inspire  his  classes  with  the 
ideas  and  emotions  of  the  text,  for  to  teach  the 
form  of  a  book  and  neglect  its  contents  is  as  if 
your  grocer  should  send  you  an  empty  barrel. 
He  should  not  neglect  the  life  and  color  that 
literary  biography  brings  into  his  field.  And 
yet  the  aim  of  the  right  kind  of  instructor  is 
no  one  of  these  things.  He  uses  them  all, 
but  merely  as  steps  in  the  attempt  to  teach 
his  students  how  to  read. 

This  it  is  to  follow  the  golden  mean  and  make 
it  actually  golden  in  our  profession.  And 
indeed,  when  one  considers  that  throughout 
America  there  are  hundreds  of  thousands  calling 
themselves  educated  who  cannot  read  Shake- 
speare or  the  Bible,  or  even  a  good  magazine, 
with  justice  to  the  text;    when  one  considers 

232 


TEACHING  ENGLISH 


the  treasures  of  literature,  new  as  well  as  old, 
waiting  to  be  used  for  the  increase  of  happiness, 
intelligence,  and  power,  what  else  can  be  called' 
teaching  English? 


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